Committee of the Whole - Bill C-4
Minister, thank you for being here this evening. I want to change the discussion a bit.
According to the Market Basket Measure, 10% of Canadians live in poverty, and that is a measure that is, frankly, not sensitive enough and leaves many Canadians behind. One in five Canadian children lives in poverty.
What poverty reduction strategies did you consider in your deliberations around how to address affordability — and not just affordability for the middle class?
What other steps is your government planning to take to reduce poverty, especially for very low-income Canadians and vulnerable populations in real need?
Thank you, senator. I want to thank you for that question, because I think you need to see Bill C-4 as part of a broader suite of things we have done to tackle poverty in this country. I am thinking of the National School Food Program for children, which our government introduced. I don’t have the numbers with me now, but it is hundreds of thousands of children who do not go hungry in the morning when attending school.
I think this is who we are as Canadians. Tackling poverty should always be front and centre in what we do.
You could look at affordability also when we decrease or reduce taxes for 22 million Canadians. That’s going to help as well. The median income in the country is around $37,000 to $40,000. When you give a family with two incomes a break of up to $840, that helps. There is also the Canada Child Benefit.
There is a suite of measures that are trying to tackle the very important issue that you mentioned: reducing poverty in our country and child poverty in particular.
We have had the backs of Canadians when things were tough for them, and I think you can count on us to continue to treat affordability as one of our key priorities.
The Prime Minister has been very clear that all ministers need to think along these lines to ensure that in what we do, we ask how we can better serve Canadians, have a government fit for the 21st century and tackle poverty, which is one of the big issues in our country.