Thank you, Chair. Good morning to my colleagues and the minister and everybody else. Thank you for being here.
I'll tell a quick story. A hundred years ago, when our kids were very young, I can remember very well sitting down with my wife Denise to make a decision on whether she could afford to go to work or had to stay home. The costs even then were so significant. I remember that we were there with a calculator. We had two kids, so it would be this much and you make this much, but then there's the mileage and all these things, so we made a conscious decision that Denise would stay home for many years to look after the kids because we couldn't afford day care.
Obviously, all of us have constituents who come in and tell us those same stories. Costs now are anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000 per year for families. Those are after-tax dollars. It's just significant. Again, as I said in our last meeting, we're all here to do great things for our constituents and our country, but this program is truly transformational.
Could you comment on how significant it is for families, number one, and what an economic opportunity it's going to be to bring so many parents, in particular women, back into the workforce and what that's going to do for our economy?