Out of respect for Mr. Vellacott, I half agree with him.
I want to go to this idea, because it's central to the question on Mr. Komarnicki's amendment. He again is suggesting that this 50% is an unsubstantiated number. I don't think it is. I'm not sure if he was on the committee when we actually heard from officials from the U.K. and Ireland and looked at reports from other countries and other provinces. There are people who are reducing poverty by significant percentages. They did it starting in the 1990s, and they have had significant reductions.
You could call the Caledon Institute before us, and they could probably tell you what percentage of families are lifted out of poverty because of the child tax benefit. We haven't reduced poverty to the level that we should, but there have been measures in there, nuggets that have been very important to the social infrastructure of this country. We have reduced poverty among seniors because of the guaranteed income supplement combined with the OAS. There is empirical evidence that we can substantially reduce poverty, and although a part of this may be aspirational, I don't think there is anything wrong with that either.
We need to have some target that says this committee and, by extension, the House of Commons are committed. We made a statement back in 1989 and we didn't achieve those targets, but it doesn't mean that everything was wasted. It just means we have to do better, we have to do more, and perhaps we have to be more specific. That's why I support the 50%.
I also want to make another point, Madam Chair. It is that if we can't come to some agreement among us, then we should defer it. I think we should look at this next Tuesday, which is exactly the 20th anniversary of the declaration of the House of Commons. That is the time to make a decision on this; if we can't come to terms on it, then we'd look at something else, but there is no point in voting on it today if there is no consensus.