Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to our witnesses for coming.
I'm going to preface the conversation a bit. I've heard a lot of solutions from the Canada Without Poverty folks, and talking about not necessarily costing more money. I think what needs to be understood is that somebody has to pay the bill at the end of the day for any kind of programs that we have, and often it's the same people you are referring to, who are living in poverty. They are the taxpayers who are hit the most by programs that are changed. An earlier witness suggested doubling CPP. That one initiative alone would cost every person who is paying into it about $6,000 per year. We are talking about $6,000 per individual. If you talk about a household, it's about $13,000 extra per year. This is before-tax money.
I think Ms. McLachlan started by saying that we are a very wealthy nation. We are actually a nation that's $636 billion in debt, which is about $80 million per day and about $17,000 per Canadian. Again, the same Canadians in poverty you are talking about have to pay the bill.
Mr. Lee, you said something that concerns me—that we are in a time of low economic growth. Indeed, in the past, in the eighties—maybe in the late eighties.... I am from a resource sector area, northern B.C. We do oil and gas and forestry. I know we have to have solutions that don't necessarily cost more, but let's talk about efficiency.
From your perspective, Mr. Lee, how would you address a strategy for poverty reduction? Most of these programs that are talked about today are simply going to cost taxpayers a lot of money, and the taxpayer has to pay the bill.