I don't want to speak to the text itself, Madam Chair. I want to speak to the importance of the idea.
Although there may be arguments about the text--and we will have a discussion on that--I think the idea is an extremely important one. Because we've said as a committee--and I would like to say that all members of this committee at some point or other have made this very clear--that poverty is expensive. Poverty is expensive to the government and, in fact, the government might be saving money by pulling people out of poverty. This is certainly how I interpret Tony Martin's motion.
So I would very strongly urge you to look to the passing of a motion that looks very much like this, because for once and for all we have to make it very clear to people that it's costing Canadians money when so many people are poor. And what we're trying to do is to show in black and white how much it is costing. That is how I interpret Mr. Martin's motion.