Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod, for your words and, quite frankly, for your advocacy for northern youth and indeed all youth across the country. I share those concerns. That's why we moved forward with multiple ways to support young people throughout this pandemic. We looked at a $9-billion package to support young people that included deferral of student loans and creation of summer jobs and opportunities for them at a time when we know their regular summer jobs may not exist because of the pandemic. It also included the Canada emergency student response benefit that gives $1,250 per month to students who need it and $2,000 a month to students who have dependants, and that was something we worked out with other parties as well. There are many different things we're doing for young people.
This particular program, the Canada student service grant, was created to incentivize and to reward young people who are stepping up in their communities. It was about giving a grant to young people for that service that so many of them were doing already. What we continue to see—even without this financial reward we would have been able to deliver and its coordination across the country—are young people in the north, in the south, right across the country, stepping up and volunteering in community organizations because they know this is a historic time in which their actions, their voices, their efforts can shape our country for the better. Again, I'm always deeply grateful to young people and their leadership within our country.
