Thank you both for your very moving and informative presentations.
I'm a mother of two. I can give my personal experience. When I first started working full-time, teaching at the community college, I knew it was going to take extra hours, and I will not say publicly how much I paid in child care, but it was extensive, and that allowed me to do the things that I wanted to do with flexibility. Looking at standardized day care versus bringing someone into my home, it had limited hours, and when you're trying to build your career—we men and women around this table can all speak about that—it does typically take longer hours than nine to five. There's the flexibility and the guilt that goes along with that, so thank you.
My question is around the area of training. When we're looking at employees working at these regulated child care facilities, one of the things that I have found over the years is that, because it just didn't pay very well, we didn't see a lot of uptake from men who wanted to work in that field, and I do think, and I wonder if you feel the same, that there's a value to having a diverse labour force in the area of child care. That's one question.
The second is, how do we standardize the training across the country if we implement a federal framework on this, which I think is an important area, if it's still regulated provincially? The consistency of delivery and potentially the learning outcomes may differ from province to province. I'm wondering, based on your experience, what recommendations you could offer there.
I'll start with Ms. Ballantyne.