Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am sure that Northern residents who are forced to get by on income support will have trouble making ends meet. With us only providing 75 percent of a healthy food basket, this has to have some impact when you are expecting people to make productive choices in order to stay on a program.
If a person is worried about whether or not their children are being adequately fed, or whether they have to find supplementary food or go to some other source to try and make sure there is enough food in the house, it cannot make their life any easier when they are trying to, for instance, better their lives through education, if that is the productive choice they have agreed to.
Surely we have to be looking at ways to increase it above the 75 percent level in the food benefit. Is the Minister not concerned that this has to have some impact on people's ability to pull themselves out of the cycle of dependency that we often find people in who are trapped on income support?