I'm married to a politician as well, so I have a husband who is rarely home because of his political commitment. One of the biggest challenges when our kids were still young enough that they needed caring for was trying to figure out how to balance that when I had to physically be away.
I also want to add—and I think this is what I really would like to hear you talk about—that I represent a rural riding. It's the third-largest in British Columbia, and really, by any standards, it's not that huge. It's just under 60,000 square kilometres. There are many times when I would come home for the weekend and wouldn't get to be with my family because I was landing in a different community, doing all the work that I needed to do in that area and then coming back.
I'm wondering if you could speak to the reality of the benefits that it would mean for people if they had at least an opportunity to work virtually if there is high need in their riding and if they have a large riding, because right now we know that flights are getting harder. Some of the ridings across this country.... Last session, I was not able to go home very often. It's much better now, but things happened that made it really hard for me to get home, so I was actually not at home as often, because I couldn't fly until Saturday and would not get there until the afternoon, and then I would have to leave first thing on Sunday morning.
I'm wondering if we can talk about the challenges that families experience because of this distance, and how most of the time people are still here, but this allows for those moments in life when you just need to be there because your partner is on an emergency somewhere.
I don't have a lot of time left. I'll start with Equal Voice.