First of all, I appreciate your bringing up this topic. For many parents in Canada, especially women who are not in the workforce because of the lack of affordable and high-quality child care, this is a necessity, and they need action on this now.
It's difficult to speak about setting up a truly national system of affordable, inclusive and high-quality child care and increasing the affordable spaces without seriously engaging in a workforce development strategy. This means we have to make necessary investments, together with the provinces and territories, to not only retain the existing early childhood educators but actually increase their numbers. We have to provide supports for training and provide tuition supports, bursaries, wage top-ups—whatever it takes—to make sure that this is a sector that is supported. This is because, without them, it will be difficult to increase the affordable spaces and it will be difficult to deliver high-quality child care.