I'm interested in the name of your house: Maryhouse. I come from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, which is probably about as far as you can get from here in Canada. There's a multi-faith food bank in Dartmouth called Margaret's House, which is named after my mother, whose name is Margaret, who had the same philosophy: that the last thing we need to do is determine who is poor. There was, at one point in time, a group that thought that a lot of these people weren't actually poor. We don't go and ask them, “Are you poor?” If you're lining up in the cold in Yukon, I imagine it's because you have to.
Nyingje, I was struck by something you said about people needing better alternatives, because you have to treat the whole person. I remember being in Kenya a few years ago. We were in a community where there was a very high rate of tuberculosis, HIV, and co-infection. They could treat the tuberculosis with TB pills, a six-month rotation. The problem was people would start to feel better, but they had no food, so they would stop taking the drugs.
We have to look at people in a holistic way. I think you're talking about that. If somebody has an addiction, you can help them clean the addiction, but if they haven't got food, shelter, or some kind of a supportive network, we're not really fixing the problem. We're just hitting around the edges. Is that an accurate reflection of what you're telling us?