Don't forget that this came out in December of last year. Our hope would be that the government would do a green paper that doesn't say, this is the path we're choosing, but merely says, here are some options that emerge from analysis of best practices, things that have failed, what other countries are doing on this issue. The Bolsa Familia in Brazil, for example, is, as you know, a huge step ahead for maternal health, something our government is very committed to. Lay that all out in a way such that we can all have an informed discussion, with the numbers that our colleagues would like to see with respect to cost—which I think makes very good sense—and the numbers with respect to investment and the numbers with respect to how the cost of not doing anything is eating away at our fiscal and tax base.
Then we could all, notwithstanding our political affiliation or in which house we serve, have a frank discussion. We could invite the premiers into that process. Provinces could look at the numbers and make their own conclusions about their own direction. What Ottawa would be doing, in that context, is contributing a huge, updated fact base, because the other side of Confederation is that sometimes our national statistics about poverty aren't as precise or clear as those of our European friends, because different provinces and the federal government keep them in different ways.
It's important that we get the facts on the ground so that we can move forward in an enlightened way. I would think that if that emerged by next December—we could all make lists, and you'll probably have before you as witnesses people who are the experts who could help put that together very quickly, and there are superb people in the department as well—then we could have a full consultation with the country, with Parliament, with the premiers. First ministers could take their own decisions, and you'd begin to get some collaborative movement, which I think is necessary if we're going to move ahead in a coherent way and make the eradication of poverty a national priority.