Human Resources committee  I may be taking a chance to dream in the sky about this, but I think it would be the leadership of a national public policy approach that moved from band-aid, disconnected, patchwork first aid to an asset base that moved upstream and said let's be preventive of poverty afflicting us.

Human Resources committee  That's right.

Human Resources committee  No, not skilled. I say place of origin—if they're coming from the United States or western Europe.

Human Resources committee  But for most of the world, that's what I was saying, skills are totally discounted and the chance of having them adequately recognized is terrible.

Human Resources committee  When I left Mennonite Centre for Newcomers in the spring of this year we were probably serving about 10,000 people a year. And that varied. That might be somebody coming in for one afternoon's help with their résumé, right through to people living for several years in supported housing facilities that we have.

Human Resources committee  I'd like to add one to your list, Mr. Martin, but also just confirm that when you talk about income security being one of the three key ones, I would say that it has two components to it that have to be kept distinct because they both matter. The one is to make sure there's well-designed public funding to make up for shortages of income for those people who need it—a good EI program, for example, and a richer child tax benefit and things like that.

Human Resources committee  A lot of these things are very hard to get statistics on. What I would say is that a significant majority of the number of immigrants who have arrived in the last five years, well over half of the immigrants who have arrived in the last five years in Edmonton or anywhere else in Canada, would be living at a significant depth of poverty.

Human Resources committee  That's right. If you looked at skilled immigrants coming from western Europe and the United States it would be a relatively small number. But if you looked at—

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much. As we talk about immigrants and poverty, I would like to start by acknowledging, as I think we always need to, that we're doing this work on land that is the traditional home of first peoples. The rest of us are here, continuing to live together and enjoy that land.