Status of Women committee  Very quickly, in terms of budgets in general, I think it's important that, in the future, budgets have a link to them, an analysis of the impact of that budget on poverty. This could be built into the budget itself so that when the budget proposals are being put forward we know t

Status of Women committee  We haven't done a detailed analysis in terms of that. We've looked at the latest budget, and of course within that budget some of the proposals and how they're going to work, but we haven't done a long-term analysis of the impact of that on low-income Canadians.

Status of Women committee  Just to add to that, the market basket measure is an attempt to measure the costs of housing, the costs of food, and therefore to give a measure of poverty that distinguishes exactly what people are spending on these items. We've only had one year of it, and there are two more ye

Status of Women committee  I would add that most of the jurisdictions that have embarked upon an anti-poverty law or strategy have, as Sheila said, first set up targets that they're going to reach. Then they've begun to coordinate existing policy. This is extremely important in the sense that at the federa

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  Perhaps I could add to that. I think it's very significant that in Canada two provinces have now adopted laws or anti-poverty strategies. One is Quebec, where it's been adopted by all parties. It was a unanimous decision of the National Assembly. It is being implemented by a Lib

Status of Women committee  But it was adopted unanimously by all parties; all parties voted for it.

Status of Women committee  Another idea that's been talked about and that I think would be very helpful to women would be to allow all working Canadians to contribute to the maximum contributions of CPP. Right now if you're a low-income worker, as many women are, then you only can contribute a certain amou