Thank you, Madam Chair, and I want to thank all of the presenters here today. I think you've given us a great deal to think about and have certainly identified some significant problems. I hope you'll all feel free to respond to my questions.
I wanted to start with Ms. Calhoun. I thought I very clearly heard you say that despite these apprenticeship programs and the $40 million that was invested, women are still not taking up the offer. It seems to me I saw a statistic that only 2% of the applicants were indeed women.
We talked a bit about child care and the fact that the lack of child care is a problem in regard to women taking up these opportunities. I'm wondering what you think about a more flexible kind of child care. One of the things my colleagues and I have been proposing is a more comprehensive and flexible national child care system so that you don't have the situation that the facility opens at 9 a.m. and it closes at 4 p.m., thus precluding a lot of women. Is that a possibility?
Second, I wanted to pursue what Ms. Wong was saying regarding the fact that women could take up trades and could become trained and then go into business for themselves. It would seem to me that in order to go into business, you would have to have access to capital. Are there prejudices and problems when it comes to women who wish to be involved in their own business being able to access capital?