Mr. Speaker, I have a number of points here but I am going to have to limit it to one because of time. I will do that.
I want to caution the House and the government particularly on the use of statistics. A long time ago I read a book
How to Lie with Statistics . We often hear that a large proportion of Canada's children live in poverty.
I deplore children living in true poverty. I need to give members very quickly this anecdote. My son who now is in Rwanda was in southern Sudan a number of years ago. He was working with a relief agency there. When he wrote home he said: "Dad, Mom, we are having great success here. Whereas there used to be 160 children a day dying of starvation, we have brought the number down to 60". He said: "That is a great success". Then he added, referring to our community back home: "Of course by Sherwood Park standards, we have not quite met it yet".
That is so true. In this country, we do not know what poverty is. The statistic that is used by Statistics Canada is that a family is in poverty if its family income is less than half of the median income.
The irony of that is that if the average family income in Canada were to reach $100,000 then anyone who makes less than $50,000 would be considered by that definition to be in poverty. Yes, they are making considerably less than the average peers around them but they are not in true poverty. I think we need to be very, very careful.
Poverty is also a state of mind. I grew up in a very poor family but we were never poor in the truest sense of the word. We always had the basic necessities of life and we had a family with loads of love. When you have that it is really all that a person needs.