Thank you very much.
Thank you all for coming and for the very impassioned presentations that you've given us.
As the chair has mentioned, we've been working on this for a long time. The way Parliament works is that committees sit while Parliament sits, and this started before the last election. Earlier this year we went east, and we almost had to change our schedule again because of what was happening in Ottawa. That's why it's a little bit smaller contingent this morning, but we need to get this on the record and we need to produce a report.
Mr. Stewart, you said that we've done a lot of study on poverty in Canada. We have. I have all kinds of reports here that make recommendations, so we have an idea of what needs to be done. We do need some political will. You mentioned the UN Convention on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Canada hasn't signed. Canada also rejected a recommendation from the UN on the periodic review that recommended that Canada have an anti-poverty strategy. And they rejected that while this committee is holding anti-poverty hearings, so we're hoping that the good intention and the strength of our Conservative committee members here, who are working very hard on this, will mean that the federal government will decide we need to have an anti-poverty strategy, as six provinces have. B.C. doesn't have one as yet.
Is B.C. working on some kind of anti-poverty strategy? Are any of you aware of that?