Child care is, I think, one of the biggest issues we're facing. I think Dr. Visentin from Brandon University said it all. At an earlier panel, he said all our focus is wasted if we're not going to deal with kids aged zero to twelve.
I think there's every bit of evidence to suggest, contrary to Dean's comments, that in fact, if we get to 1% of GDP, we're getting there, and at least we're not sitting at 0.25%. In fact, if we planned this, it would cost $1.2 billion annually just to get to that over 20 years. We can do it. It's not impossible. Yet we can't seem to get through to these Conservatives. We've been on the road for a week. We've been having hearings for three weeks. We can't seem to convince them that it's absolutely a public policy imperative.
So I want Gay and Karen and Debra and Susan and Donna to get through to the Conservatives for me. Why do we have to do this now?
Gay, do you want to start, and then we'll go around.