Thank you, Madam Chair.
First of all, I want to thank both of you. You couldn't have given us a more concise, superb presentation on the issues--very direct and very clear.
As a former member of the welfare council some years back, I can say that at the time we were looking at the myths and realities of the welfare state system, with a whole host of other things.
Ms. Regehr, you mentioned to us that basically it doesn't matter what we look at--the senior woman, the single mother, the person on welfare, the family making minimum wage--because poverty goes right across. It has many different reasons; welfare is low, wages, taking time out to look after family. I'm not going to go over all the reasons you've said, but obviously there are many different reasons. So the solutions have to be multi-approach, multi-target.
One of the things that has been discussed--I just throw this out--in addition to the child tax credit, which we have tried, is a guaranteed income, I guess, for all...and I'm not just talking about for seniors, but for all wage people, a working tax credit. That would only apply to working people, which wouldn't actually work for....
Can you give me an idea on this? If we were to get all of our programs into one pot and try to create in this country a form of guaranteed income, would that go a long way toward helping or not? Have there been studies by the council on those things?