Human Resources committee  Adding to what Mario said, low-income Canadians depend disproportionately on public services. And the choices being made for tax cuts, which they cannot readily access, over the provision of public services simply exacerbates the situation for poor people. It particularly exacerbates the situation for racialized people, especially, as I said, low-income racialized women, who desperately need child care spaces to be able to access the labour market.

Human Resources committee  I think the federal government can make a commitment to funding that kind of work. Two, I think we need to get beyond simply looking at the dollar amount of the cost of not doing what we need to do.

Human Resources committee  There is some work in the American context in looking at the cost of not acting to address issues of poverty. There is no work that I know of in the Canadian context that addresses this directly. But I want to suggest a couple of things. One is, I think, the funds to do that work.

Human Resources committee  I agree with you. I think the economic or the financial is important, but the social is particularly important. The roots of youth violence report said that “if such racial inequalities persist and continue to deepen, the social fabric of Ontario will be stretched well beyond the breaking point”.

Human Resources committee  I have to agree with you that one of the impediments to addressing poverty systematically and seriously is the undermining of the capacity of the government to undertake public provision through the tax cuts, not just over the last two governments, but over the last, I think, 10 to 15 years.

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much. Thanks for the opportunity to appear before the committee to discuss this issue, which for many of us has been a preoccupation. We have hoped for quite some time that the federal government would engage in this issue. The Colour of Poverty Campaign is a province-wide initiative made up of individuals and organizations working to build community-based capacity to address issues of racialized poverty and the resulting increase of social exclusion and marginalization, particularly of racialized groups across the province of Ontario.