Yes, it's not only about self-employment; it's also about supporting small and medium-sized businesses. We know they are the largest employers in the country. Micro-financing is an idea that we should be looking at as government and encouraging in our financing institutions. It would help people to set up their own businesses, to become self-employed, and to hire other people.
One of the things I don't want us to miss in this conversation is the link between all of these things. We have to link poverty to race, to youth, to women. What are the strategies that have worked in other jurisdictions? What are the strategies that we have successfully used in the past? It's about political will. We have to rethink who we are as a country. Micro-financing is a great idea for increasing low-interest loans. I think we need to pay attention to racialized communities being the last hired and the first fired. We need to look at things like employment equity at the provincial level. We need to look at things like contract compliance at the national and provincial levels. Those are the ways that we can ensure the greatest participation for the most vulnerable in our economy.