I have to say that I'm very glad to hear you say there is no debate. We recently had a meeting with a provincial minister responsible for poverty reduction, and that was on April 30. She said the same thing, that there is no debate, that race and poverty are linked.
We started this Colour of Poverty campaign just over a year and a half ago. At that time, we had to do a lot of convincing. It took us a year and a half to get to where we are today, where people have finally come to realize there is an issue of racialization in poverty. Certainly a lot of studies have been done over the years by a number of people. The City of Toronto has taken a lead. They looked at the census data based on 1996 and 2001 to give us all the information we need to push this issue forward.
There are different communities or projects that have looked at this issue. Some are happening at the University of Toronto, the three-city project, for instance. And Access Alliance's Community Health Centre also started a project looking at how to develop measurements and indicators and benchmarks.
So there are different stages in which these studies are found. But I don't think there is anything at the governmental level, whether it's the municipal or provincial or federal, that is really taking ownership of this issue, saying, yes, this is what we are going to develop.
Even in our conversation with the minister, it is something we presented, but this minister was looking at us like, you know, “You have to have help us.” To me, that's an indication that nothing has happened yet.