Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for Vancouver East for her remarks. She articulates a very serious concern about poverty, child poverty and its social consequences. Whether she believes it or not, all members of the House share her concern. We may disagree on the remedy but we all share the concern.
However, one often hears from this hon. member and members of her party statistics and figures about 1 in 4 Canadian children living in poverty and a huge percentage of the adult population living in poverty. She went on to suggest that the government somewhat cynically could change these numbers by redefining poverty.
I would like the member to comment on this issue because I think it is not a flippant one, it is a serious one. If we want to solve the problem, we need to know what the problem is. We need to define it. We need to know what we are dealing with and that means getting a proper and accurate measure of poverty in Canada.
My understanding, and the member could correct me if I am mistaken, is that the poverty measure to which she refers is actually not the poverty measurement at all but is rather the low income cut off measure of Statistics Canada, LICO.
I am sure she could confirm for me that the low income cutoff is calculated as a relative percentage of family expenditures on necessities such as food, shelter and clothing. This is calculated as a percentage of the average family expenditure on these items.
In other words, would she not agree that as a relative measure it would be literally and mathematically impossible to ever eliminate poverty or substantially decrease poverty in Canada as long as there is any degree of income disparity? Would she not therefore agree that absolute poverty as it is understood in common language and common parlance by common folks is not measured by the LICO? Would she agree that it might be helpful to come up with a fair definition of what the basic necessities of life are while understanding there are contingencies, differences by region et cetera?
Would she agree that the case she and other social advocates make would be stronger, more compelling and convincing if Canadians could really define the number of folks who really do go without the basic necessities of life, if we could get beyond a relative measure of poverty which is a permanent measure because it will always exist as long as there is even an infinitesimal income inequality?