I think the Canada child benefit, as I've said before, will be important. Once we get the full dataset, which will probably be released some time next year, we'll see a fairly substantial decrease, particularly in child poverty, as well as in the poverty rates for the parents of those children. Of course, we often focus exclusively on child poverty, but poverty is a family concept, so if the children are lifted out of poverty, so are the parents.
From a poverty reduction standpoint, the Canada child benefit is an important part of the overall basic income project that in essence the federal government has embarked on. Although, I would certainly encourage this panel to examine supports for, as I said in my presentation, families who don't have children and are not yet seniors but are still in low-income categories.
I think the Canada child benefit is unlikely to affect the cost of child care, which I would say is the largest impediment in Canada at this point in most of the provinces for female labour force participation. That is something the Governor of the Bank of Canada has highlighted, and others like Minister Duclos have highlighted.
As Don mentioned earlier, the multilateral framework does provide some funding. It's the first time that the federal government has been involved in child care funding for a decade and a bit. It's positive, although most of that will be targeted to lower-income families.
I think that if we're interested in higher female labour force participation, what we need is a country-wide program that sets fees across the country, not just in Quebec, Prince Edward Island, and Manitoba where there are presently set fees. Those lower fees I think will help with female labour force participation.