Shall I answer the question?
Just thinking about models and the way Canada is doing things generally, compared to some other countries, and to answer the first part about vision, I think at the federal level we really don't see this, but it is happening in other parts of Canada. Obviously, on the poverty front, it's in Quebec and in Newfoundland and Labrador. And now we have Ontario and Nova Scotia all going in the same direction. All of this reflects a model of governance that's more similar to what the European Union is doing, and there are several elements that I think are important. They have been outlined in documents that we've produced. One is called Solving Poverty. But it's not about poverty, it's about everything. It's about a social and economic plan for the country. It's about gender equality. It's about poverty and exclusion. It's all of those things, so you're not doing piecemeal efforts.
There were common objectives. They have indicators they've agreed on that they're all going to measure. So they all know what the goalpost is. They all know where they're going. They all know they have to develop a plan. They all have to report regularly. They all have to consult. There's a transparency and a coordination.
However, interestingly, as this presenter at the Hill this morning indicated, England and Ireland actually moved faster than some of those measures that were put into place in the Lisbon accord because they recognized how severely poverty, in particular, was limiting their economic development.
Now, all of those poverty plans that are working have gender equality embedded right in them. They're all the same thing. It's not we do one thing here and one thing there. It's a common governance model, basically, and there is this open method of coordination. It's interesting, too, because you have an intergovernmental structure. In Europe it's different nations. In Canada we have different jurisdictions. For example, they would have their common base set of indicators that everybody agrees on, and then each country in its own context would fill in detail. But they're all working towards the same thing, and they're all sharing information so they can build on each other.
I think more and more people are looking to that sort of model. We know that Newfoundland and Labrador have built their structure, in which gender equality is central, based very much on the Irish model. I know that directly. Their method of coordination is brilliant. So this idea of having a plan, of having sort of broad government commitment, some common elements, those are the things that seem to be working, no matter what the issue. Those are models that seem to be working.