Welcome to all of you, and thank you for taking the time to be with us today. We appreciate it and appreciate the time you've taken also in preparing your briefs, which, if they haven't all been distributed, will be following their translation.
As you know, we're mandated by the House of Commons to consider your input and the input of Canadians, as we are doing in the next few weeks and have for the last couple, in preparing recommendations to the finance minister for the upcoming budget.
I appreciate the fact, as I said, that you are here today, but I also want to remind you that we are limited in terms of time, so you have been asked to confine your remarks to five minutes. I will give you an indication when you have a minute remaining and will become increasingly agitated in the last minute, which will become apparent to you. But I will give you an indication that you have a little bit of time left, and I will cut you off at five minutes. I just want to give you that advance warning.
There will be a couple of other committee members joining us, and you should be aware that they also review your briefs. We keep minutes of our discussions, so they will be reviewing those after the meeting as well.
We'll begin with the B.C. Child Care Advocacy Forum representative, Rita Chudnovsky.
Welcome. You have the floor for five minutes.