As a crisis centre, we see more than 2,000 people a year, and a big bulk of those are people with financial issues—for example, their electricity has been cut off and they come to us when they have an outstanding bill and they're in the cold. The honest answer is that they need that education and not the handout, so we need to be walking away from providing funding to non-profits that just want to write the cheque and think they're going to fix it.
We need to look at her budget and say, “Listen, do you think this is something you can save on and cut? If you choose to do so, I'm able to help you with x amount.” However, if I see that her ins and outs aren't going to change and she's still going to.... I'm not going to pay Mr. NB Power, because that's not really pulling her out of poverty.
A lot of what we have to do is financial literacy and education.