Thank you, Chair.
Thank you. Those were very good presentations, very helpful to us, and with specific recommendations, which is really what we're looking for.
We've been travelling through this part of the country. We were in Vancouver on Monday, Whitehorse on Tuesday, Yellowknife yesterday, and we're here today. The committee is going to Winnipeg tomorrow. Everybody on the committee is very committed to coming up with something in terms of an anti-poverty strategy.
We get along very well, crammed into tiny planes and meeting rooms, but today I woke up and I was pissed when I read the Globe and Mail. I was so mad when I read this. I hate it when I'm right--and it may not be that often. I've always said that the perfect storm, in a negative sense, for people who are working on the front lines against poverty is that you go into a recession where there are already people who are poor, the government decides to spend massive amounts of money, but it doesn't reach the poor. Then you have to pay for the money that was spent, and what happens?
Here's the headline in the Globe and Mail today: “The price of stimulus: Here come the cuts.” It says “Staffing budgets for public servants will be tightened and grant money for non-profits nationwide is expected to become scarce.”
What is it now? How much stimulus money did the social agencies in Edmonton get?