Mr. Chair, thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm pleased to meet with you.
I think that we all share the same goal, of serving our fellow citizens and fighting poverty. According to our reading, the best way to fight poverty is to give people the tools they need to get out of poverty. As they say, it is better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish. I'm sure that my friend and colleague Mr. Long, from Newfoundland and Labrador, would agree with me, because before he was an MP and before he was in the hockey world, he worked in the fishing industry. We believe that the best way to fight poverty is to give people the tools they need.
I would like the people here to tell us which of the measures put forward by the government would allow people in difficulty to get the resources and the means they need to get out of poverty themselves, once and for all, with the help and support of the government. The government is there to give them the tools they need to get out of poverty, and not to give them money, because that would mean that they would not necessarily be able to develop the skills and the independence necessary to get out of poverty.