Thank you.
I, too, will quote from John Baird, who said we are focusing on the national role because provinces and municipalities are best placed to provide support at the local, regional, and provincial levels.
I wanted to quote that because in our province we have 1,000 children in the city of Saskatoon who are not enrolled in school. These are children who should be in elementary school. It's a huge problem. I think we also have to address our education, which puts that in the provincial role, the earlier years, which is not to discount that it's also important to mention that this is a huge problem not only in Saskatoon but also in the city of Regina. I just wanted to mention that perhaps we have to start thinking about why these children aren't in school and addressing those issues.
I also wanted to mention to you, Sheila, about the point you made on raising the exemption for the working poor, that we do have the employment credit to help the amount of income that can be earned without paying tax. It's up to $500 a year, and it will be rising in January, so there are some benefits in our last budget that specifically address the working poor, as he said.
We are also in consultation with the provinces and the territories, seeking to identify some measures to improve the incentives to work for low-income Canadians.
You talked about families and the working poor. The goods and services tax does help; I know lots of parents who really appreciate it when they have their children in things like skating lessons in small community centres and rec centres. They all benefit from any reduction in any type of tax. Even as small as some people might think a penny is, it does add up when you're trying to run community centres and you're trying to put your children in extra events. I just wanted to make those comments.
When you talk about apprentices, I want you to elaborate a little bit. You said that many people drop out of apprentice programs. What would be your reason for that? Are you saying that the employers aren't doing their part, or the employees?
Recognizing credentials is a really huge issue. How do you get it, when there are so many governing bodies deciding the qualifications to come into Canada to work in their province? In some cases, it's the professions or it's businesses or certain companies are trying to seek engineers. That's an example that was brought to me recently. They had lots of problems. Every province has different jurisdictional problems. How do you overcome that, when in fact it is governed by your own professions? Canada is a big country. I think Australia does have a national recognition body, and we are working on that in some manner here, but I just wondered if you wanted to comment on that.
I have one more question to you, Sheila. Did you ever do an impact analysis for small businesses on raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour? They seem to be hit the hardest when the minimum wage goes up. Small businesses in Canada make up a great deal of our economic growth. Is there any sort of analysis or any sort of statement from them?