Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to go back to the discussion we started earlier. Some of the presenters we had in Ottawa talked about the persistence of poverty. We know that poverty has persisted in a certain portion of our population, sometimes for generations. But there's also the depth of poverty for some of our people.
It was suggested that we need to look outside the box, maybe even change EI and the whole welfare situation, and establish a fund to assist Canadians along the lines of the guaranteed income supplement. Welfare would be an absolute last resort.
What kinds of programs could we fold into this? I'm thinking that with the exception of the child benefit, housing, early education, and child care, we have a myriad of tax credits and income support programs. Have you looked at creating a guaranteed income supplement that would maybe even include the EI system, all of the refundable tax credits, the working income tax benefit, and so on, to create one safety net? I want to get a bit more sense on whether there's any appetite for that kind of thing.