It's very important that everyone have the opportunity to escape the poverty trap. You're absolutely right, Ms. Mathyssen, when you say that poverty is one of the contributors to human trafficking and to the vulnerability, particularly of women, to being trafficked. We all want to prevent that, absolutely.
As a government we've taken a number of steps to help alleviate the poverty situation, first of all in trying to help people get good jobs. To do that we need to have a strong economy. We have been providing a number of forms of assistance to business, both large and small, because it's small and medium businesses that create 75% of the new jobs. We've provided incentives to help them be more competitive in a world market.
We've provided a universal child care benefit to parents so that they're not locked into a formal child care system. They can opt into it if they choose, but they'll have assistance to get the form of child care that best meets their needs. We've provided millions of dollars to the provinces to help them create formal child care spaces, so that young women can get into the workforce.
We've introduced the WITB, the working income tax benefit, to help people get over the poverty threshold that sometimes keeps them on welfare instead of becoming productive in the workforce.
We've provided education assistance to students in universities and colleges and have encouraged them, through incentives, to get skilled trades and get the education they need to earn a good living for themselves.
We've introduced EI reforms to extend eligibility but still encourage people to work.
We are spending more money on affordable housing to help these individuals who have low incomes than has ever been spent before.
So we're doing a lot to help ease the poverty situation that can contribute so significantly to human trafficking.