Yes.
I'd agree with everything that Georgia Barnwell just said. We have to remember that early learning and child care are key. I think that was mentioned by the previous speaker as well. Let's remember that women are also a diverse group, and racism is a factor for some communities in Nova Scotia. Women also account for a main population of people with disabilities, be they physical disabilities or mental health disabilities or other issues.
Many of these women are on income assistance, and I'd like to really stress what I was trying to say before about income assistance and the need to try to transform that into an income-based program. Nova Scotia's employment support and income assistance program, ESIA, is going through a transformation process. As I understand it, there are a number of concerns there, one of them being transitions from income assistance to employment, which was also referred to earlier. One of the main things they want to address—and this is only in terms of proposing a business plan, so I guess it will have to go to the Nova Scotia government cabinet to address it—is a marginal effective tax rate, and they're also talking about trying to reduce the barriers within the income assistance system itself. If you look at the various federal and provincial tax credits, you see they're up and down like a yo-yo, so there are all kinds of financial barriers in the system that need to be addressed.
The refundable tax credit developed under the Canada child benefit is a great program and really needs to be built on, in my view. I think we do need a disabilities refundable tax credit similar to that. The Nova Scotia government has a few refundable tax credits in its income assistance program, but these need to be coordinated to develop an income-based program that is not creating false barriers, that actually moves to an income-based program rather than a needs-based program based on punitive regulations around employment, around cutting people off, and all that kind of stuff.