Human Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Lobb. The issue of income splitting and child care is all related to dollars and cents for family decision-making. Some of those families are going to be in poverty and some are not going to be in poverty. As we've discussed, when families are below a certain leve

Human Resources committee  I don't think the government can have just one tool that will address poverty. I think they need a variety of tools and a variety of policy incentives that will assist them. If we don't assist families that are on the borderline, they may indeed fall into poverty as well. So we n

Human Resources committee  I think an upper limit is something that would be appropriate to look at.

Human Resources committee  I've considered that question. I'm not an economist. I've talked to Mr. Mintz about that, because he wrote that paper. It probably varies because of the tax level in each respective province as well. I think there should be an upper limit of some sort, because people, after a cer

Human Resources committee  I'll be very brief, considering the bell is ringing on me again. We clearly know that family breakdown is very expensive. As I mention in the report that we're releasing next Wednesday, it shows a lot of zeros behind the numbers, and it's something I'm sure that all Canadians an

Human Resources committee  We've discussed family income splitting, but I'll leave that one for now. I think there can be other things that will assist too. For example, tax credit programs can reward people by saying, “You're married, you're doing these things. We know there are outcomes that will be ben

Human Resources committee  If I said it was a pilot, my apologies.

Human Resources committee  Thank you. The income splitting, as I said in my preamble to Mr. Vellacott, will not work for those people who are below the LICO, if that's the measure we want to use. It's intended to assist families that are at low levels of--

Human Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Vellacott. Those are great questions. We could spend a lot of time talking about those, and I know time is pressing, so I'll be as fast as I can through some of those. Income splitting will not help those people who are in abject poverty at this time. They need ot

Human Resources committee  Thank you. The word “compel” did not enter into my discussion. Rather, the statistics clearly showed that family breakdown will most often result in levels of poverty, that those who remain married are less likely to enter into poverty.

Human Resources committee  I think the government has already started that process. For some time now there has been a disincentive to being married by rewarding those who were living common-law. That was just rectified in the last two budgets.

Human Resources committee  Compelling your obligations has to remain out of this discussion. It really needs to be a personal choice. However, I don't believe that the general public, or even the government and the policy-makers, are aware of the net effect that marriage or non-marriage has on society itse

Human Resources committee  Certainly. Thank you, sir. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify that for you. And pardon me, my French is terrible, so I won't even attempt to do that. The work we have done has been drawn from international sources, looking at the United Kingdom, primarily, where they have h

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much for your comments. The issue of minimum wage is one we have not done direct research on; however, how it fits into the issue of poverty is one of being a floor of income levels for people. You're quite right that the provinces deal with a larger number of pe

Human Resources committee  Terrific. Thanks very much. Mr. Chair, members of the committee, my thanks to you for the opportunity to appear and add my comments to your ever-growing knowledge base on the issue of poverty. As you no doubt know already, the issue of poverty in Canada is complex. It involves