Mr. Speaker, at the current time there is no agreement in this country about how to appropriately measure poverty.
Some groups think that the LICO measure is too high. Some think it is not high enough. What most people seem to agree on is that we need to broaden our understanding of poverty to better address the situation of low income Canadians. That is why we are working with the provinces to develop a market based basket measure which takes into account the cost of people's essential needs.
Any new measure that is developed would supplement, not replace, the current measure like the low income cutoff.