First of all, thanks to all of you for your presentations today. It's certainly food for thought, and even though perhaps it's not all one-sided—it's a mix of information—it's really good for debate.
First and foremost, the government right now is not looking at eliminating Fridays as the absolute option, or having Fridays off. I really have a problem when I hear “Fridays off” because, again, it's going home and working in our ridings. But rather, our goal is really to achieve gender parity in the House, number one; and number two, to make sure that our Parliament is more inclusive. To achieve that is to have more family-friendly policies put in place.
I have no children, but six years ago I was asked to run for office and the reason I didn't was that I was taking care of my elderly mother who suffers from dementia. At the time when I calculated everything I just didn't think I could do it.
This time around I was asked again and I still had to shuffle things around, but I was encouraged that our party was looking at going towards these more family-friendly policies.
I just wonder if perhaps you could elaborate on the positive impacts that a compressed workweek or more family-friendly policies would have on recruiting more women in politics, having a more inclusive Parliament. How would it also benefit a work-life balance for the present parliamentarians who are here?