I thought about what would be most useful for you, having looked at some of the materials that you've already covered in your trek across Canada, and also respecting the fact that we are in Medicine Hat and have an interest in what's happening locally.
I thought I would give you a better sense of the promising practices that we're seeing from a broader system planning perspective around poverty and then challenge some of the assumptions around a focus on strictly income.
A lot of the presentations you've seen have tended to focus on basic needs-related issues, with things like housing, income, savings, etc., which are absolutely essential. I'm not saying that those are not necessary to a poverty strategy, but looking from the ground up, we're seeing something of a more holistic picture. I wanted to take you through some of those ideas, which are also specific to Medicine Hat's new poverty strategy. You'll hear more about that from my colleagues.
When we asked people experiencing poverty or vulnerability what it means to be living in poverty and what an end to poverty looks like from their perspective, they obviously often talked about their need to afford housing and their inability to pay rent on time. They also talked about the mental stresses that come with that experience.
We wanted to shift the lens from a conversation just about whether we should support a living wage or basic minimum income and say to you that if we want to really tackle poverty, we need to have a multi-dimensional lens to it.
I try to illustrate how interconnected these issues are on slide 4, which shows the key factors to end poverty. There you see it ranges from health and wellness to housing, transportation, safety, inclusion, and belonging. There are about 13 of these factors. When we ask people living in poverty what it means to them to have a life that's full of well-being, these are the factors.... Oh, it looks like you're a little bit confused.