I completely understand your concern on that, and I would concur that there other supportive programs you could put into place. You know, we de-institutionalized an awful lot of people about 10 to 20 years ago. When I grew up there were no homeless people on the street. Part of it has been public policy. These people have no place to go and no way to hang on to a place that they can afford to live in because they can't get a job.
But I would like to say that quite beyond that group of people, who are poor and do have mental health issues, we have a new constellation of people called the working poor who we didn't have ten years ago. We have a 30-year structural change in incomes, where at the middle of the income pack wages have been absolutely stagnant, but not housing costs, not education costs, not energy costs, not all of the basics. So the savings rate has plummeted. We're not talking about mental health for people at the middle. We're talking about people who are not being paid more. Some people are being paid a lot more, but an awful lot of people are not being paid more for the work they're doing. In fact, they're being paid less. If they lose their job, they're likely to obtain a less-paying job. But the costs of the basics continue to rise.
With due respect, Mr. Lobb, I think we are facing a real disaster in the making if we just say that poverty is about somebody else, probably someone with a mental health problem, and I don't really need to deal with it with a program. We are going to have a wave of economic dislocation. This is going to affect you and everybody. You can predict poverty by postal code in your riding now.