Thank you, colleagues and Mr. Chair.
Thanks to our witnesses.
Poverty is a very important issue to all Canadians and each one of us around this room. It has a non-partisan effect in every constituency, no matter what race, religion, sex, demographic. We could all share all kinds of stories, from young to old....
I represent a riding in the interior of British Columbia that has a high number of seniors. It's a serious issue. Within our budget, we have addressed the age credit and trying to find ways to help people get off the welfare wall. Mr. Flaherty relayed the working income tax benefit.
I want to clarify something. I spent nine years in local government working on the social planning committees and with the province of British Columbia on programs for housing and child care initiatives. Federally, we are restricted. There are difficulties within the Constitution, and we have to clarify the divisions. If we wanted to automatically set up a national standard, there would be some roadblocks, obviously, set up by our friends in Quebec and other communities. We have to recognize that we work within the Constitution.
Our government has re-established stable and predictable funding to the provinces. As my colleague mentioned, there is the annual Canada health transfer at 6% per annum until 2014, a 3% increase to our social transfer and child care funding, and housing agreements with the territories and the provinces. In British Columbia, there's a 30-year agreement. That's about $2.2 billion over the 30 years. And we continue to work with programs.
Specifically from Dr. Lynk, I liked your analogy as far as setting goals for reducing leukemia down to 92% goes. There's a similar initiative to eradicate polio around the world, with the Rotary. Our government has invested in Afghanistan. It's one of the four countries left in the world....
In your opinion, what measures have we taken today, as a government, to help reduce and hopefully eradicate child poverty or to move in that direction?