Sure.
As Mr. Martin said, I'm a director with Canada Without Poverty. It's a national organization that works for the elimination of poverty in Canada. We've started a campaign around the use of the word “dignity” and how that relates to people who are living in poverty. It's one of the things that people in poverty don't have; it's stripped from you when you become poor. “Dignity“ is a word that people can understand. Often it's hard for people to understand words like “stigmatization”. They really don't know what that means. But for people to know about what the facts are around how poverty affects people and how it damages communities....
I live in Regent Park, which is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Ontario. I see racial discrimination every day around people unable to find jobs in this country simply because of the colour of their skin.
For me, that is a point around dignity. There's no dignity if you come to a country as an immigrant and you find yourself totally closed out of Canadian society. You lose your dignity when your credentials aren't recognized in this country. You lose your dignity when you can't afford to buy food for your family.
Those are the things that we want to bring to the attention of Canadians, because Canadians do not understand poverty. They do not understand the damage and the cost of poverty, the cost that every day all of us as citizens have to pay.