Of course, I could.
We put in place our plan to bring in universal, affordable, high-quality child care because we knew that it was a powerful driver of economic growth. That's not a theory. That is based on the experience of Quebec. What we've seen in Quebec is that putting in place affordable, high-quality early learning and child care has hugely increased the labour force participation rate, particularly of mothers of children who are three and younger. Before child care was introduced in Quebec, it had one of the lowest rates in Canada. Now it has the highest, and that has delivered economic growth.
Actually, I spoke with Madame Marois to get some advice from her because she was the minister who put this into place. She said something really interesting to me, which was that the initial genesis of the program in Quebec—which has been such an inspiration for us now across the country—was actually economic. It was because there were great concerns about Quebec's structural economic growth capacity, and child care was seen as a way of building that. I see the Quebec members of Parliament nodding their heads.
It's nice when, with hindsight, you can look back on a decision you made and see that it is even more appropriate. I think all of us know that a challenge we're facing in many parts of the country is with the labour force. Early learning and child care is a really powerful, structural, long-term way of increasing Canada's labour force. It's a very important driver of jobs and growth.