Human Resources committee  I have a quick comment on data. There was an organization in Ottawa called the National Council of Welfare, which no longer exists. It was attached to HRSDC, or whatever it is called today. They collected data on welfare rates by province, so you could actually compare, if you're

Human Resources committee  They can do it much better than anybody else, because they were actually federal officials. It's an important point. I was, a long time ago, a federal official, and I know that when the federal government was going to increase the child tax credit, their concern was that they w

Human Resources committee  No.

Human Resources committee  In 2004?

Human Resources committee  I believe that was the issue of the RRSP and GIS clawbacks. Yes, I was in favour of some form of tax prepaid savings plans.

Human Resources committee  The C.D. Howe Institute has published articles, and I had—I'm tempted to use unparliamentary language—a dispute with the C.D. Howe Institute. I wanted a cap on the size of TFSAs.

Human Resources committee  A monetary cap.

Human Resources committee  My motivation for a TFSA was simply to find some way that low-income people could save in a tax-advantaged way and not have it all escape into the federal treasury through the GIS. I spent a lot of time talking to seniors who were living on low incomes. They had an average of $30

Human Resources committee  No. My point is that the TFSA is another example of the same thing. You are allowing people to scam the GIS, and eventually that will become politically unsustainable, I think, but I'm not a politician.

Human Resources committee  If you're interested in improving the circumstances of low-income seniors, the poverty rate for couples is actually quite low. The poverty rate for individuals, males and females, is quite high, so you're really going to be looking at the GIS. There are some things I've mentioned

Human Resources committee  Certainly I would include the social. I'm not sure what the spiritual means, but my bias is that we are social animals. Even Adam Smith, the economist, said that poverty is the inability to walk in public in a linen shirt. I think that's the quote. I've written many reports on

Human Resources committee  It pushes together full-time, part-time, and whether you've given up looking. StatsCan actually, buried down in it, publishes 12 unemployment rates: long-term, short-term, part-time, all of this. The LICOs and the LIMs, all of these income-based measures, are arbitrary. No though

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much for this opportunity to discuss this important and timely issue. I'm going to comment mostly on seniors poverty, because it is more clearly in the federal domain than poverty for younger families. Reducing poverty for non-seniors would usually look at things

Human Resources committee  The privacy discussion brings back memories. When I first discovered there were the 300,000—it was my discovery—I phoned officials whom I knew personally and said, “Is this right?” They said yes, and I asked why they didn't tell people about their benefits. They said it was becau

Human Resources committee  I'm looking to the chair.