Thank you very much.
Thank you all for coming today.
I'm pleased that later on today, Michael, we're going to have a chance to see the Metro Turning Point shelter and the important work that you do. I want to ask you a question after I go to the Face of Poverty group and perhaps to Betty Jean on two issues: EI and the child tax benefit.
Your group, Alasdair, has done some tremendous work, and I've had the opportunity to meet with them fairly regularly. I see Caroline is here. She's a regular in my office. We recently had a chance to have her attend as part of our discussion on poverty with Ken Dryden. I feel like we have to preface all of these meetings around the country with the fact that we know that a lot of you have talked about this a lot. As Claudia Jahn said this morning, any chance we have to talk about it is good, and hopefully we'll produce some significant recommendations.
I spend a lot of time talking about EI these days, as do a lot of people. Sometimes people in my own Liberal caucus have said over the past year, as well, “EI is an issue for you because you're from Atlantic Canada.” Well, that's not entirely true. Where I live, for example, in Halifax, and where Megan lives, you need 700 hours. You need the maximum number of hours to qualify for EI. There are areas where the economy has struggled--Cape Breton, where it's 420. This is why it's good to go around the country. You get a sense of the fact that things vary from area to area. But we do have people who could conceivably work in the same place, who could be laid off, and one could qualify for EI and one might not, because there are 58 regions. Nova Scotia, I think, has four or five of those. I think your recommendation is an important one.
On the child tax benefit, the Caledon Institute have been great crusaders for social change. They presented to our committee last month, and in part of their presentation they said that, in fact, governments have made more progress against poverty than many people realize, even though there's still a long way to go and the challenge is daunting. Canada has made substantial strides in reducing poverty among the elderly and some among children.
We haven't done anywhere near enough, but their point is that there are some vehicles there that we can use, and one of them is the child tax benefit. I know you are among the groups that call for us to raise that to $5,200 a year. I also think you're among the groups that have suggested that the universal child care benefit would have been better served to take that $2.5 billion and put it to the child tax benefit and the low-income supplement of the child tax benefit.
Do you want to chat about how important that is for low-income families?