Front line issues: Poverty in Canada ...

Above are three of the books I've recently read on Poverty in Canada ... I've discovered that the issue of Poverty seldom has voices of those who are living in it speaking about it ... ALL three of these books, as well as "On The Edge" by the late Lindalee Tracey, are eloquent, painful, powerful and cutting books examining the many issues that comprise the issues of poverty and homelessness in Canada.

They are written by people who wanted to understand more fully the many factors and issues that come into play for people who are shelterless, chronically precariously housed, dependent upon the system, or simply part of the ever growing mass of the working poor. Writing from different backgrounds, in different time frames and with different lenses all three authors have come to a remarkably similar set of realizations about poverty, homelessness and the many issues that these topics embrace ...

For starters, ALL of the authors note that too often the money used to address the issues of poverty, serve to create, promote, perpetuate and even expand an industry to serve the poor and less fortunate. The money that actually reaches those who need it pales in comparison to the money spent setting up Government offices and agencies, establishing checks and balances to minimize abuse and misuse, and promoting the programmes themselves. Even the not-for-profits use the meagre income for fund and volunteer raising appeals ... Over and over, these authors note that the real dollars reaching those in need are far less then the grandiose announcements made by officials and leaders who say they are tackling the problems. A simple shift to a minimum income through income tax refunds, tax credits, and other direct support that could be monitored by a simple programming switch within the vast computer system that guides our Government could solve this problem without spending MORE money on programming and offices while delivering money directly into the hands of those who need it.

A conversation recently with one of the local service providers revealed that the shelter allowance increase of a whopping 35 dollars a month in Manitoba saw an additional 35 to 70 dollars being spent on EACH 35 dollar increase to ensure that this service isn't being abused. The 35 dollars to those on the bottom rung of the social assistance ladder sees the government spending 50 to 100% MORE MONEY every single month to ensure that these people are not abusing the system. To take a reasonable step back, one needs only to consider the income level of these folks, the costs of housing for these folks, and the desperate and DOCUMENTED circumstances many of them find themselves in to realize that the Government would be better off spending ALL of the money in direct services rather than wasting it trying to catch a half a dozen cheaters.

Instead of paying out 350 additional dollars every month to people who don't qualify and who have found the loopholes the Government has wisely set up a gatekeeping system that spends a MINIMUM OF 35 dollars for every 35 dollars they give out, to ensure that those 10 people get caught ... I was never strong at math, but this simply makes no sense to me, and strikes me as an incredible waste of money, time, resources and people ...

The second finding that all three authors share in their reflections on poverty is the insidious and devastating power that SHAME has on those who are impoverished ... As I read their words I not only understood them, I realized I have for the last couple of years been living them ... It is embarrassing to admit that you are unable to make ends meet ... it is exhausting to make excuses to creditors and bill collectors who call repeatedly wanting to know when you will be able to make a payment ... it is hard to make the step into a food support programme and ask for help ... doubly so when you have been one of the people who has worked to craft, create and support those programmes in the first place.

Previously in this blog, I shared the comments by Senator Hugh Segal who noted that our system is still based on a Victorian era judgment that renders the poor and those on assistance as lacking ... As one who has over the last year worked no less than nine different jobs, and who has experienced over and over and over the averted gaze, the angry glare and the condescending stance of those who would rather shun the uncomfortable things I tend to stir up by my mere presence under stand completely the debilitating effects of SHAME.

I did not chose to be poor. I did not chose to be fired from the United Church Congregation in Minnedosa. I did not chose to be rejected by my "Christian" colleagues and friends. I did not chose to work part-time minimum wage jobs to make ends meet ... BUT, I do actively chose each day to live, to move forward and to speak out about the experiences I have had. Over and over in the writings of these four books, I've encountered the blindness that accompanies the invoking of shame upon those who the "good people" in our society chose to reject and over look in their "generous" charity.

Pat Capponi describes her experience of trying to do banking after the successful publishing of her first book. She couldn't provide any appropriate id, and was being treated with distain by the bank employee until Pat called a high ranking bank official she had met at a speaking event ... Pat had said to this man that there is NO LEVEL PLAYING field when it comes to poverty issues - there are haves and have nots ... the bank employee called the number for this high powered exec, who confirmed Pat's identity, and assured the clerk that she was who she claimed ... Pat was then handed the phone and asked what he thought about the Level Playing Field now?

Pat's experience is not unique ... the sting of rejection is acute and painful and strips away hope ... it causes you to stay home, to lurk in the shadows, to withdraw from public settings ... to be blunt - it simply hurts too much to see the pity in the eyes of those you meet, and it is even more pronounced when you meet someone who you once worked along side as a contemporary or colleague ... so, you withdraw ... you hide ... and the SHAME increases and deepens and crushes you and takes away you hope ...

A third common thread between these writers is the realization that poverty brings with it a stigma that is almost immediately and very viscerally recognized ... the shabbiness of clothing ... the worn and frayed jackets, jeans and shoes ... the general grubbiness of appearance, coupled with what Lindalee Tracey identified as the effects of a heavily carbohydrate laden diet means the poor become a visible target for immediate judgment ... the ability to buy simple necessities like soap, detergent, and deodorant immediately sets you apart ... the roundness that comes with consuming the empty calories of bread and carbs like pasta supplied through various food support agencies renders you "LAZY" by those who fail to see ...

Judgment kicks in, and shame settles over people who are already feeling crappy about thier circumstances and themselves ... the long term effects of a carbohydrate heavy diet lacking in fresh fruit and vegetables, and without a balance of foods are less certain ... the ability of the children to cope in school, and to succeed is very much open for debate ... Tracey contends that this form of malnutrition may be having a far greater and far longer lasting impact then we can even realize ... a child being fed a carb-laden diet may well be experiencing developmental set backs that affect their wellness, their mental capacity and their ability to live a full life ... this slow steady decline may be a major factor in the generational dependence on social assistance ... the whole nature versus nurture debate may crash on the systemic malnutrition that we've imposed on the most vulnerable among us ... the generational dependency may well be a creation of the circumstances we as a society have imposed upon the diets of those who are most vulnerable.

There are more reflections ... and in the coming days, I will continue to share them as I work on compiling my personal experiences, writings, reflections and discoveries into something more than a scattering of pages, note books and musings ... Over the last four years as I've found myself marginalized, cast out, and out cast from the "good people" of society, and as I've struggled to simply make ends meet, I've come to realize that too often those who speak of poverty, even though their voices have credibility and their findings are smack on, are people who can step free of the chains of poverty and precarious housing.

As good as these authors and their books are, they each can make a call and leave. Each of them, in their own way acknowledge this freedom that others lack. One American writer who explored working for minimum wage in various big block retailers openly struggled with the idea of whipping out her American Express Gold card and solving her financial problems ... when you have no safety net left it's a different experience then consciously choosing NOT to pull the escape lever ...

I'm not arrogant enough to say my voice is THE VOICE on poverty, but I have over the last 27 months as my life has spiraled downward come to realize how challenging and difficult living on the margins can truly be ... having been writing a monthly column on poverty has opened my eyes to what being poor means ... and in the last year living on part-time wages, and at least a half a dozen occasional jobs, I will be bold enough to say I've learned a few things about what being poor, with no means of escape can mean ... SO, in the coming days, I will write ... and I will write from my heart and from my experience and I will share what I've learned about poverty from first hand experiences ...

The truth will not be comfortable for some ... and it WILL be rejected by many, including those within the Church who've grown comfortable and complacent in their status quo word ... but it is a message today that needs to be shared because there are truly lives in the balance if we fail to address the poverty that exists all around us ... Like they used to say in X-files: the truth is out there ... the challenge now is to be willing to see and acknowledge it ...

Been Writing ...

I'm beginning to realize, that even though I'm not earning my living at it, I AM A WRITER. I am a contributing writer to no less then three publications - two in Brandon and one in Ontario, and I am constantly working on an article for one of them, or a short story that his wiggling around in my head ... and I'm going to try to follow the advice of Chris Baty's ideas in "No Plot? No Problem." and try to get some of the book and novel ideas I've been playing with for years, down on paper ...
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So - I will say it with out shame or fear - I AM A WRITER !!!

And for what it's worth, some of my latest published writings are available on line (as well as in print) ...

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For my latest contribution to the Brandon based weekly newspaper The Wheat City Journal on the benefits of Guaranteed Income click here - and for more info on Guaranteed Income scroll down to the posting for October --, and read the interview transcript from Hugh Segal's appearence on CBC's The Sunday Edition.

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For my latest contributions to the November Issue of Brandon's Westman Parent magazine click here - I am so proud to be a member of the team who pulls this publication together each month, even if I am merely one of the writers ... it's a great publication, and it is almost entirely based in WestMan!!.

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Now ... back to my writing ... okay, first I have to start the laundry, then do some grocery shopping, walk Flute and Oboe, AND do the dishes ... but you get the idea !!

A Common Sense Approach to Poverty ...

On Sunday morning on CBC Radio One's The Sunday Edition - Michael Enright interviewed Conservative Senator Hugh Segal (above) noting that Mr Segal is one of the few voices speaking out on Poverty issues at a national level ... the following is a transcript (made by ME) of that interview ... there may be some errors and glitches, but the heart of the interview and the bulk of Mr Segal's common sense approach to dealing with poverty in Canada by implementing a guaranteed income supplement for those struggling to make ends meet is sound and has a proven track record ... following his conversation with Mr Segal, Michael interviewed Dr Forget or University of Manitoba and another guest about the five year Mincome experiment undertaken in Dauphin Manitoba that guaranteed everyone a minimum income level and had astounding results ...

Unfortunately, as with most common sense solutions - few are willing to take the chance ... we have too much invested in the bureaucracies and the structures we've built to risk dismantling them ... so instead the continuation of a rule and judgment based system continues, when the solution might be as simple as a reverse income tax ... maybe one day, as Mr Segal notes, a political party will embrace this, and our housing, homelessness and poverty problems across Canada will suddenly begin to disappear ...

One can (and MUST) continue to hope and to work for THAT day ... in the meantime - check out Mr Segal's interview online at the CBC Radio One web site for The Sunday Edition, or take a few minutes to read it here (Mr Enright's questions/comments are in bold - Mr Segal's follow):


First off, how can we solve a problem we can't even define?
Well, I think we have to be realistic about what poverty actually is. Poverty is not about measuring up to some Stats Can standard. Poverty is not having enough money to get by with the basics. And we know in every province by the welfare rolls the amount of people who fall into that category, and we also know as a whole Canada has somewhere in the range of 5 to 8 million Canadians who fall beneath ANY definition of poverty anybody might want to use. For example …
Say that, say that number again …
5 to 8 million Canadians. And if you take a look at what people who on welfare get, in no case do the people who receive welfare income actually receive as much as Stats Can calls the low income cutoff. So in all cases the average welfare family would be receiving between 11 to 15 thousand dollars a year less than what all statistical measures suggest that they actually need to get basic housing, basic clothing, heat and all the rest … food … and that is why we see an increasing uptick in the amount of use of our - of our (sic) food banks across the country. This is why you have a city as wealthy as Calgary that has 2500 people in shelters every night and another 500 people sleeping on the street. So the problem is real.

Is there a difference between poverty and inequality? Inequality to me is a gap between haves and have-nots, but what is the difference?
Yeah there is a difference. Inequality is something you're always going to have in a free market society where some people do better than others. I'm not for eradicating that. I'm for equality of opportunity not equality of outcomes. But the difference between inequality and poverty is in poverty's case it's it's it's (sic) not buying a new pair of shoes this year cause you hope your kid's feet haven't grown. It's in many parts of Canada, negotiating through plexi-glas with well meaning civil servants to have enough money to buy food for your family. That's poverty. And far too many Canadians are forced to live in that poverty. And by the way before we hear the National natting of teeth about 'well those are just lazy people that don't want to work.' 48% in some provinces of people who fall beneath any definition of poverty are ACTUALLY working. They are the working poor and in some case holding more than one job and still don't make enough because of the cost structure in their part of the world.

In the 19th Century, and perhaps most of the 20th Century Poverty was seen to be some kind of moral failure on the part of the people who are poor. Do we still believe that?
Well we say we don't, but our welfare systems operate as if we do. You know there are some welfare offices in Ontario where if you show up to apply for welfare you're asked to watch a film, a video about why you perhaps shouldn't be applying and should be thinking about other options. Then you have to come back the next day . That's …
You have to wa … Wait a minute. You have to watch a video ....
You have to watch a video.
...telling you …
… yup …
…why you shouldn't be applying for …
Yes, and why there may be other options you have to consider. And then if you have watched that video, gone all the way home, and hopefully there is public transit in that rural part of Ontario, but in fact often there isn't, you can come back the next day and apply in the normative fashion. So there is a kind of Victorian judgment made about why people are poor and my view is, in the same way as we make don't a judgment about who gets wheeled into the emergency ward, about how they got sick, or how they had their accident, we just deal with it, it would be far more efficient, far less costly, far more humane, if we really dealt with the fact that people who earned beneath a certain level need to be topped up for a temporary period of time. It would be a far more humane and efficient way.

I want to get at this whole issue of a guaranteed or basic, you call it basic income … but realistically has there ever been a society or a jurisdiction that has eradicated poverty?
Nope there hasn't. But there are jurisdictions that are doing a far far better job then we are, and these are jurisdictions like the Germans and the French and our Scandinavian friends who are productive economically, who in fact in some respects are more productive then we are, have a strong profit motive but have made decisions about the kind of investment they want to make in ensuring that the gaps are not so large as to be destroying of spirit, and destroying of any incentive. And of course what they've also recognized is that many of our well meaning welfare systems across Canada are traps that actually penalize people who try to break out, who try to get a low paying job because that's what they can get at, and the amount of money they lose in so doing is a higher rate of taxation than many of our wealthiest fellow Canadians experience on their last bits of income. So we do have some perversities in the systems that work against eradicating poverty, and I think they are ways we can work on those together and make some real progress.

When you talk about … when you look at the myriad of programmes – welfare programmes across the, across the whole political system … you – you – you complain about how these are micro managed in a particular way – 'micro-focused welfare' – I think is your expression. What do you mean by that, and what do we do about that?
Let me give you one very specific example. When the Standing Committee of the Senate on Cities and Poverty was in Nova Scotia, I got to visit with a, with a (sic) shelter that was set up for young unmarried girls and their kids. It was a magnificent facility. The apartments were large and comfortable. The young women were getting educational support and a whole bunch of other things to help them through this part of their life, help their children through this part of their life. They got 700 bucks a month roughly, of which the facility had to take 500 odd for the purpose of room and board, which only makes sense it was ...
Right.
… not for-profit. And then of course the Province beared down heavily to find out the name of the father at great cost. And if they found the name of the father, and if the father chose to deny his paternal responsibilities, they would then finance a DNA test to see if it was the father, and if it was proved to be the father at great cost to the tax payer, they'd force the father to contribute, and then they would reduce by the amount of the contribution the amount that income support gave to the mother. So that the mother and the child are no further ahead, and we had spent a small fortune to try to determine fault. The truth of the matter is that many of those mothers had decided that they didn't want anything to do with the biological fathers for whatever reason. We would be far better off to be investing that money in an income security system which help people through those temporary periods in their life in a way that was fulsome and appropriate as opposed to very very meager and frankly in some cases not all that helpful.
I just want to make sure I understand this, so as a result of a DNA test...
right
… the absent father ...
right
… is compelled to contribute something, if he choses to do and in most cases they don't ...
right
… that money is deducted from what the woman gets?
Bingo !! and that process of clawing back and deducting on our most poor fellow Canadians is a regular part of our welfare system across the country. If you find a job and you earn more than a 100 bucks a month, if you – if you get regular employment, if a person on welfare is able to get admission to a post secondary institution and applies for a student loan their welfare is canceled instantaneously, when the thing we want them to do is to better themselves as we would all say through education, so they can be employed and they can make a contribution and pay taxes as opposed to be beneficiaries. So those are the perversities in the system which a micro managed approach to welfare produces consistently despite by the way, case workers who are doing their best with a tough set of rules and who care deeply about their client base.

What if I put it to you senator that these people are, are a drain on society, and on the social order, that they just don't want to work, they'd rather sit home and get their welfare cheque and head off to the beer store on the 15th of the month ?
Well, ...
You've heard that argument
I've heard that argument, and is there some gaming of the system? Yes there is. But, guess what? I think we all found there was a touch of gaming on the system when a certain bank collapsed last September by people with huge amounts of income. I'm saying if we're gonna pass judgment on gaming of the system, let's do it equally. In some cases, people who gamed the system received bonuses. All we're asking for here is that we don't penalize the folks who are honest, who have no other choice, who deserve a measure of support because the one factory in their town closed and they've run out of UIC, or because there's a disability, or because there has been family violence and they've had to leave the home. Those are the people, as well as those that have mental difficulties who constitute the largest amount of client group being addressed by welfare groups across the country. Very few of them are gaming the system. Many of them have been gamed by the system, which is why they are falling beneath the poverty line.

My guest this morning is Senator Hugh Segal from Kingston Frontenac Leeds. We're talking about poverty this morning, and how it exists in Canada, how bad it is, and what can be done about it. Senator Segal is one of the few Conservatives to take up the fight about poverty and I want to talk about that in a moment, but I want to get a number from … well, not necessarily a number. If we were to put together all of the provincial and federal payments that we now push out the door of the treasury to vari …to people for various, various support things and took all that money, put it together, could we afford in this country, what you call a Basic Living Income, you say that's the rational foundation for a free society.
I believe we do. At the present time we spend roughly 150 BILLION dollars a year between the Provinces and Ottawa on all the other support mechanisms that go out to sustain people in various different parts of their lives. That does not include health and that does not include education. So, that is a very large number and what we do know now is that through the guaranteed annual income supplement, which was brought in first by Mr Davis, in Ontario back in the 1970's, the ability of the system to top people up is actually quite automatic and doesn't involve any excessive bureaucracy. One of the reasons …
And you had something to do with that as I recall back in the 70's.
Well, I was one of the juniors working around when the NDP and the Liberals in a committee reduced the salary, in a motion, of the Minister and the Deputy Minister, not by a dollar, but to a dollar, and I recall the Deputy coming to visit me as the junior young legislative assistant and asking “well, what are you going to do about that?” and I said, “We're not going to have an election on your salary – take that to the bank. Why don't we find out what the NDP was really looking for. And what they were pointing to was the fact that at that point in Ontario history seniors, mostly women whose husbands had died, without meaningful savings or pension, were in fact living in abject poverty and many were using dog and cat food as part of their menu. That was real. It's not an urban myth. And guess what? Two weeks later the Honorable Darcy McKeough, one of the most centre right pro-Bay Street finance Ministers in the history of Ontario, stood up to announce the guaranteed annual income supplement for our seniors in Ontario, because 'they had earned it. They'd invested. They had built the province, and those folks then got an automatic top up if they earned beneath a certain level.' And then that spread across the country, and we now do it federally as well. It's not as robust as it might be, but it's one of the reasons that we have until most recently succeeded in reducing the rate of senior poverty, and by the way, no civil servants, no interviews, no welfare office visits. It's all done automatically. So we have the mechanism to do this in a way that would save in my judgment, billions over what we are now spending in the administrative costs around these judgmental based, rules based welfare programmes across the country.

You said earlier that poverty is a drain on the treasury, that it hurts the national ex-checker, Gross Domestic Product and all that, why is it also bad for business?
Well, it's bad for business for a couple of reasons. First of all it reduces the amount of people who are able to consume in any kind of meaningful way, it reduces the amount of well educated people that can come into the workplace with the skills we need to expand our technological and manufacturing and other economic base. It produces a huge tax drain on business and on earning Canadians because of the excess costs that are pumped into health care, the penal system, the judicial system for reasons that relate to poverty.
You know in Las Vegas they had a guy called Million Dollar Louis. Louis was a homeless guy in Vegas, and by the time they added up the cost of all the 911 calls, police interventions, they found that over a few years he had cost the state of Nevada over one million US Dollars and they finally realized – 'you know you could build a lot of housing for low income people at a fraction of that cost,' and in that way we now have tax levels for average Canadians that needn't be as high in my judgment, because they're financing health care and other systems that are hugely expanded by the impact of poor Canadians who are the first to get ill, the most dependent upon various systems, and we know that minute you reduce the level of poverty you begin to get productivity levels, education outcomes, registration in schools … in fact there was a test in the great province of Manitoba in the mid-70's called the Manitoba Min-Com Project in Dauphin, and a wonderful economist from the Manitoba Health Sciences Centre has just begun to look at those numbers, and here is what she's found. Dr. Forget, She has found that for the five years that that Min-come operation topped up farmers and others' income when they fell beneath a basic level, school registration went up, attendance at post-secondary education increased, police interventions went down, health admissions went down. Every potential indicator of a healthy and growing society was in fact was made much more robust by virtue …
Which is why in a few moments we are going to talk to Dr Forget about that experiment, that, that … in Dauphin Manitoba. But let me ask you this – you're a Conservative, you believe in free enterprise, you are pro-business big and small – why are you such a lone voice in all of this, certainly in the Conservative side of the political spectrum. Isn't it the job of the Conservatives to grind the poor under the wheels of their carriage??

(laughter) Well, ah … No, and I don't think I'm alone in the sense that I think of Minister Flaherty with the working tax benefits, which he brought in, which was the first real measure to help the working poor out of a welfare trap. It isn't as large or as broad as I might like but it's a huge step in the right direction. He deserves great credit for that, so I don't feel alone, but because I don't carry the burdens those ministers of the crown and other carry I can focus more on the specific part of the aspect, and I consider it a privilege to do so.

But why? Why? You grew up in the east end of Montreal, downtown Montreal. Three brothers. Were you … you don't come from an impoverished background do you?
Aaaahhhh, um … well, calling us working poor would have been a pretty plummy overstatement of our status.
Really?
Yeah, we did receive food baskets from the local congregation. We were often recipients of kind of the informal aid, the financial aid of the community, in difficulty. I do recall a bailiff coming to the house to repossess the furniture, so ...
This is around St Urbain Street?
Well, it was actually in lower Outremont at the time. And so I have experienced that, and I've been very fortunate. And by the way, one of the really good things about our record on poverty, just to be even handed, is our intergenerational progress, people who do better than the generation from which they came, actually is better. We rank in among one of the top countries in the world where that intergenerational progress out of poverty is actually quite compelling. And that is because some of our policies around education for example and literacy, while not as robust as some would like, actually make a very good contribution. The problem is that for the people who are in poverty now, we can talk about the kids, we can talk about the seniors, but for the folks who are in poverty now, we really don't have any innovative answers and that is what I'm kind of fighting against.

Let me go back to this loneliness thing, because I don't recall poverty as an issue on the national table in the last election, or in the one before that. I can't remember it coming up in the leaders debates. I covered the Obama campaign fairly closely, I don't recall a major speech on poverty. Why can politicians not … how do they get away with not addressing it? Bit talking about it?
Really … really simply. Poor people tend not to vote. Poor people tend not to join politicial parties. Poor people tend not to go out to meetings. Their will to democratic participation is diminished by worrying about where they're going to sleep that night. It is diminished by worrying about whether they are going to have enough money for heat and food and pharmaceuticals in the same month. So when you fill people with that kind of angst on an ongoing basis and you give them no way out, chances of them being active participants in our political life, demanding that their issues be addressed will in fact, be heavily diluted, and that's what we see both in the United States and in Canada. And let me say this, while our unions are generally on the side of social progress, sometimes a bit excessively, but their hearts' in the right place, their primary obligation is to protect their members.
Right.
Some have stepped up on the issue, the CAW, on the poverty issue, but others have been very self-centred and frankly all of us in society, the private sector, the not-for profits, the universities, our colleagues and the media have to ask themselves Why it's not a greater issue in their lives? And why are they not more focused on it?
I think that part of it is because poverty tends to be unseen. It's not in the neighbourhoods in which many of us work. And I think part of our responsibility, people like myself who have the privilege of working on public policy in the Nations' Senate, on the payroll of the tax payer is to go to those areas with others of all political parties raise those questions and see if we can't find better solutions, and hopefully one of the political parties, I would prefer if it was my own, but I don't really care – one of the political parties will embrace a solution that is more wholistic, that is more efficient, is more humane, does respect privacy, and really moves this pro … moves this file ahead.

With great respect, are you trying to put the Progressive back in progressive Conservative?
(chuckle) … Look I'm a … I'm an unrepentant red Tory.
Yup
I feel really comfortable in the party in which I now have the privilege of serving as a Conservative. I actually think that e Harper administration has more of a heart than is otherwise portrayed, and sometimes they're embarrassed about portraying that heart. And don't know how to do it. But hopefully, that will increase over time.
Senator, thank you. It's good to talk to you again this morning …