I thank the guests for coming today.
I'm from Cape Breton. Cape Breton is a founding place for cooperatives. We've gone through a lot of economic hard times over the years in Cape Breton, so there is a very large component of social interaction and social financing.
We have a few examples in Cape Breton that are very successful. We have New Dawn and BCA Holdings. The community is very engaged. They filled the gaps where government sometimes doesn't do the job, for various reasons, whether it's in social housing or helping small businesses.
I see in some of your reports here how successful you are. Only a couple of per cent are failures, and also there's the administration and how you keep those numbers down. It is a model that needs to be encouraged and fostered.
My first question for all of you deals with the federal and provincial sides, because some of our social financing is done through provincial funding. What needs to be changed more on the federal side to help foster this?
It deals with everything. Some of the needs we see include day care, and some of our groups back home are thinking of getting into day care. For many of the things that we see as challenges in our society and the future, how can the federal government help foster this more and help to fill that gap? How should we be taking a lead with the provinces to make sure that it's fairly uniform across the country?