First of all, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Ms. Dhalla for the question. I appreciate the chance to talk a bit about the universal child care benefit and about child care in general. This is a very important issue, and I think we all appreciate how important child care is for Canadian families.
It's true we brought in the UCCB because we did want to not only offer people choice but help them with the cost of child care. The UCCB has helped to lift 25,000 families out of poverty and has lifted them above the poverty line. In those families there are over 55,000 children, as I recall. So it does have an impact on helping people escape poverty.
That's the first point I would make, and that's part of my assessment of the benefit of the UCCB.
The second point I would make is that the UCCB allows people who have different situations that can't be addressed by child care to make different choices. And really there are many people in the country who are in that situation--people who work shift work; people who live in rural areas of the country; or people who simply make the decision because of their own values, or because it's simply what works best for them, to look after their children at home. So the UCCB is a huge help to them.
I would point out, as a matter of fact, that the UCCB is taxable in the hands of the lowest-income parent, so for many families there is no tax at all on the UCCB. I think it's important to lay that out.
Secondly, we've increased support for regulated child care spaces by $250 million. That amount will rise over a period of years. It's now $1.1 billion a year, rising to $1.3 billion a year over a period of years.
In addition to that, we've put in place a new tax credit that will help businesses and employers create child care spaces. That was just passed through the House at the beginning of December. We're seeing some interest from companies that want to start to offer that to their employees.