Thanks for the question.
I just want to say one thing about spending and poverty. If I said to you that 235,000 people were being tortured in Canada, would we ever say, “Yes, but we don't have enough money to deal with that”? No. We would say that's a human rights issue, and we need to solve it, and that's what we're saying here. When I say 235,000 people in a country that the World Bank says has the 10th largest GDP, I'm saying we have a human rights crisis on our hands that has to be solved. You can't just say we don't have enough resources. Even in times of conflict, in natural disasters, in places where there is no money—and I mean no money—we expect human rights to be respected, protected, and fulfilled. Period.
On the issue of not having a definition, the measures that we have are good definitions. Can a person make ends meet? We don't have to be all technical and complicated about this. It's pretty straightforward. The Market Basket Measure that Ms. Milne referred to is a good one because of its regional specificity. If you don't have enough money to pay your rent—and we know affordability is a huge issue across the country—or you don't have enough money to buy a basket of groceries—and we're not talking caviar and fancy orange juice; we're talking basics—then you don't have enough money to live. Heating costs in Canada are another major component.
At the international level, there are standards for particular areas of poverty. For housing, food, water and sanitation, there are adequacy standards. You'll find that Canada is failing our lowest income group on all of those measures. If you look at indigenous populations, we're not meeting the adequacy components of housing, food, or water and sanitation.
There are guidelines, but they're not hard definitions, because you have to have a contextual approach.