Thank you, Madam Chair.
Let me thank each and every one of you for coming here today. This is a full panel with a lot of information and a lot of varying perspectives that I'd like to follow up on.
We've certainly heard two very different pictures of life in rural Canada, and I want to follow up on that, but before I go to that I'd like to ask particularly you, Ms. Fancey, about the current compassionate care leave embedded in the EI program. Perhaps others would comment on it.
In this committee, we have looked at maternity benefits for self-employed workers. We know that Quebec has a stand-alone program. What I'm wondering is whether some of what might be described as auxiliary services, as opposed to employment insurance in its truest form, should be part of the EI program as we currently know it, or whether we should, as government, be looking at a stand-alone program for some of the additional services. I don't like to call them auxiliary services under the current EI program, but additional supports.
But don't take too long in answering, because I want to ask a question on rural life. I don't know who else might respond other than you, Ms. Fancey.