Thank you for the praise. I really do appreciate that. I will pass that on to my staff.
We are very sensitive to the needs of seniors. These are the people who built our country, for heaven's sake; they are your parents and your grandparents, and mine. That's why we want to help them. We want to help them stay active within their communities. We recognize that they have a wealth of experience and knowledge, and we're trying to tap into that.
Let's face it. They say that 70 is the new 40 because 70-year-olds have so much energy compared to, say, the 70-year-olds of 40 years ago. We want to tap into that energy. The New Horizons for Seniors program does that. It gives seniors a chance to organize projects that get them involved in helping other seniors and helping young people learn from their wisdom. It gets them volunteering and keeps them active.
It has a number of aspects. One is that project component, which is really good. There is another--the capital assistance part of it. I know that in my own riding the local seniors' home set up a satellite library. Because they're outside of town, people can't get downtown to the library easily, so this is a satellite library with large-print books and audiobooks. It really serves the local needs. These things don't cost a lot of money, but they have a huge benefit for our seniors.
The third component is the program that we're really pushing this year. We started last year with a series of ads about elder abuse, which had tremendous success in raising awareness of the issue. We're going to push it further. This year, my Minister of State for Seniors and her National Seniors Council are going to be focusing on raising awareness of and combatting financial abuse of elders, because too often that either goes ignored or is dismissed as not being abuse. But I really believe that crippling somebody financially is just as serious an issue as crippling them physically. The scars may not be physically visible, but they are very real and they can last a lifetime.
This is all being done through the New Horizons for Seniors program. I was very pleased when the Minister of Finance included an additional $10 million this year on top of the $26 million that was already in the budget, to which the Bloc member referred.
It's really a fabulous program. I'm hoping that we'll be able to protect even more seniors from financial abuse, whether it's by scam artists or, unfortunately, even members of their own families or their friends. This is not acceptable. We want to stop it and I'm looking forward to working with the Minister of State to do just that.