Thank you very much.
And again, as I did in the last round, I want to apologize on behalf of Libby Davies, who's not here this morning. She wanted to be here, but she is in Ottawa because of other things that are pressing. She wanted me to extend her greetings and apologies. Don Davies was going to be here as well, but he was called back too.
We're coming to the end of what I think has been some really good work by this committee, looking at what we might recommend to the federal government by way of a federal role in a national anti-poverty strategy. The only piece we have left that we have to dig into a bit further--and certainly as a result of listening to some of the presentations today--is the question of aboriginal poverty and how to deal with that. As was mentioned this morning, it's the canary in the mine in terms of how we manage our resources.
I want to say it's nice to see you again, Jean. I appreciated your book of a few years ago on poor-bashing, and I appreciate the work that you continue to do.
A couple of the things I would put on the table for consideration by the committee in terms of a report, keeping in mind that we're looking at the federal role here, are income security, housing, and social inclusion. You mentioned Hugh Segal's calling for a guaranteed annual income or a basic income. There's a lot of movement happening, not only in Canada but also around the world on that, based on the inherent value in every human being. They should have a basic income they can count on at regular intervals.
Maybe you could share with us a few thoughts on these, if you wouldn't mind. I think we know that we need a national housing strategy. We had one. We had the Canada assistance plan that provided some guarantee of income to people, and that's gone. There's a newly evolving social enterprise sector happening, more aggressively in other parts of the world and in Quebec, but not in the rest of Canada.
Perhaps we could start with you, Jean.