Our government launched a national strategy for the protection of children from sexual exploitation on the Internet. One of the announcements I made yesterday is the renewal of that strategy. There will now be $71 million to fund activities in this area; it was initially $30 million.
The bulk of it is through our partner, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, in Winnipeg. I encourage all members of the committee to visit the facility they've established in Winnipeg. That's where the cybertips hotline operates, known as cybertip.ca or cyberaide.ca. It's a wonderful group of people who are very committed to their work. Their work has resulted in 43 arrests so far; I think in two cases, children were removed from abusive situations.
That organization is part of the announcement yesterday. They've launched the “Respect Yourself” campaign, which is going to put a booklet about Internet safety practices into the hands of every child in grade 7 in Canada. It basically cautions them against inappropriate photos and so on being communicated over the Internet, and encourages them to protect themselves and to be savvy against those kinds of risks. I would encourage all committee members to hook up with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection to see the good work they're doing. We're happy to be funding them. I think their work is excellent.
It's one of these areas where technology is changing and we have to keep pace with it. Governments are often slow to keep pace with it, which is why you often end up with partners out in the community that do a better job of it. This is a case where we've partnered up very well. The RCMP's involved in a big way and we have a lot of success stories all around. Actually, Canada has a very good record on it with some of our municipal police forces, as well.