Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to our guests today.
Sir, in your opening, you talked about members living paycheque to paycheque. You talked about the affordability issues they face.
When we start looking at the challenges of affordability, we see that many people at the municipal and provincial levels have talked about a universal basic income. They start to address not the expense side of the equation but the supports and the revenue side in terms of an individual's ability to pay for rising rents in this instance.
When we deal with the CAF, that would point to compensation. That would deal with how much the government is providing its members to pay for rising rents and address the affordability issues they, like all other Canadians, face when they go to the grocery store.
In December, we had a vote in the House of Commons to increase the pay for our members to try to assist with the affordability issues that you've raised today. It wasn't unanimous.
How important is it to ensure that our members receive the appropriate level of compensation to ensure they have the ability to pay for rising rents, the increased costs that they'll face when they go to the grocery store with their families and other expenditures that we're witnessing today in the Canadian economy?