Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, everyone. It's great to have everyone here today.
The comments this afternoon give me a lot of perspective. I have two kids who are four and six. We lived downtown in Toronto before we moved up to where we live now, and we had to go through the day care system there. We know what the waiting lists are all about. We know the expense of up to $2,000, sometimes a little more than that, per month of day care costs, and even in the suburbs, it's very expensive.
Our government has put into place a number of different measures to help families, because every family has different needs and some are unique and some are more standard in terms of workweeks and so forth. In my view, there's never been one size fits all.
We introduced the Canada child benefit, an extra $5 billion a year to Canadian families every year. Now we've put a substantial amount of funds, over $500 million a year, for child care—we've come to agreements with the provinces—aimed at helping those who need it the most. And I agree with that perspective and that view.
I thank you, Ms. Ballantyne, for your comments.
I do wish to ask Ms. Pullen something, because I think in our budget there were two things that were very substantial: the consolidation of the caregiver tax credit and the nurse practitioner expansion.
How profound—and I use the word profound—was that change for rural Canadians, looking at it through a rural lens, to allow nurse practitioners to be more involved?