Just to answer your question in terms of what's being done to improve the conditions, the lower socio-economic conditions, facing aboriginal people to make healthier choices, definitely from the social programs area, I think that's a very good question in terms of the overall health and well-being of a community. Of course, we're talking about childhood obesity here and the health factors, but definitely research has been showing that higher levels of education and economic development are most likely to lead to more improved and long-lasting results for the quality of life at the community level.
What we've done in our social program areas is to provide basic social services such as food, clothing, health, non-medical assistance for persons with functional limitations, for instance, at the community level, and support for family violence prevention programs. We try to carry these programs out to be reasonably comparable to provincial standards. We ask, how do we support a community so that they are equivalent to their counterparts outside of the reserve setting, for instance? With that, we try to provide the appropriate and adequate funding and support in key areas.
For instance, with the national child benefit reinvestment program, we have the early childhood development support and we have income assistance by which we're trying to streamline our welfare program, so that they are supporting communities at the appropriate level, but also trying to encourage them to enter into the labour market stream as well. There are a number of programs that we provide directly that try to address the social conditions and how to support them, so that they are measuring up to or at least getting close to provincial standards.
As I mentioned earlier, what we've tried to do as well is to be innovative in key areas, such as partnering with Health Canada, for instance, in suicide prevention, etc.