Welcome, Minister. Welcome back from your trip overseas as well.
Thank you for those opening remarks.
Minister, I've described our budget, both last year's and 2016-17's, as budgets having a three-pillar approach where we undertake investments in innovation, skills training, and lifelong learning as well as infrastructure, and with all of that, growing the economy and a stronger middle class.
One of the issues we face in Canada is our demographics. We have an aging workforce, and we have a lot of people retiring, and we need to look at avenues to increase participation rates among certain classes of workers. Fundamentally, I think one way that we increase the long-term economic growth rate of our economy is to bring in under-represented groups of workers who may not be at levels where they can be, and we can undertake certain measures.
As the father of two young daughters, I want to ensure that women in the labour force are represented at equal levels to men. Our government has undertaken a number of measures, but I want to hear from you just how important it is for us. Specifically, in the budget, in chapter 5, there is a gender statement for the first time ever that we encourage labour force participation rates to increase, and how important it is for economic growth.