Minister, because we have a limited amount of time, I want to remind you that the PBO report just came out citing a shortage of 9,000 core housing units and indigenous families in core housing need. Although I appreciate the investments—I will take any investment, because we are in a crisis—we lost two other women the other week. It is a very pronounced crisis, and in fact the worst in the country.
I have another question in regard to that. For over 30 years, the federal government has promised to eradicate child poverty. Your government actually renewed this promise in 2018 and published a national poverty reduction strategy, with subsequent poverty reduction legislation in 2019.
Your strategy called for a human rights-based approach to poverty reduction, one that reflects principles that include universality, non-discrimination and equality. Yet the Canada child benefit, a crucial mechanism for reducing child poverty, excludes parents with precarious immigration status, even though many work in Canada legally and file personal income tax.
This is a very pronounced problem, certainly in my riding, where families are just struggling to get by because they do not qualify for that tax benefit. Is it normal for a human rights approach to poverty reduction to exclude refugee claimants and parents with undocumented immigration status?