I'll be as succinct as I can.
I'll start with the resource issue, because it's so important. No one has named an amount of money that would be saved if we actually started addressing poverty. I'll give one figure: it costs about $55,000 to have a homeless person on the streets and it costs about $37,000 to have that homeless person housed. That's one small example, but that's a really important point here. We would actually be saving money.
Why do we advocate a human rights approach? We've been talking about causes, the causes of poverty, and 4.9 million people. That number suggests it's a systemic problem. We don't have 4.9 million lazy people or 4.9 million people who ditch school and just can't figure out their way back to school. It's a multipronged, systemic problem.
The human rights approach deals with systemic problems. When you look at what is happening across the country, these are all human rights problems. It's an issue of inequality. It's often an issue of discrimination. It's an issue of the lack of adequate housing. These are all human rights issues. They're codified in international human rights law.
I think it's appropriate to use human rights responses to human rights problems. As I said, we wouldn't abandon the charter in the face of a freedom of expression issue. We would say, well, the charter applies. Why? Because it's a rights issue. I'm saying let's bring those rights to whatever policy, programs, etc., and hopefully legislation, that we have.