I'm so sorry I only have five minutes because this is such an important and great subject matter. I want to thank each of you for coming out and sharing your personal experiences with us, which is deeply personal obviously.
For myself, I am also an entrepreneur. I owned my own consultancy business for 18 years. I also developed and established Canada's longest-running breakfast program. It's in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, which is where I'm from, in British Columbia.
I'm also a sociologist. That's my background. I've spent 25 to 30 years doing social policy at all the different levels of government, from municipalities to the provinces to the federal government as well, prior to being elected an MP. I just wanted to say that child care, as you all know, is a provincial responsibility.
So what has been interesting in this discussion here, having been a mother, an advocate, a community person who has developed grassroots programs in the Downtown Eastside from the ground up, having fostered seven children—and I'm a foster grandmother as well in the Downtown Eastside. I've also done macropolicy at a sociological level with $5-billion programs across Canada.
There seems to be this sort of interesting play from where, Victoria—if you don't mind me calling you that, Ms. Lennox—is saying that we need to be grassroots, we need to come from the ground up because that is where people are going to become engaged. That has certainly been my experience in developing not just breakfast programs but youth at risk programs, all kinds of programs for local community across Canada.
Secondly, though, I am hearing you that the federal government obviously has a role. We do have a very strong women's network that the Minister of Labour and the Minister of Status of Women is putting together and has led. We are doing international things in terms of child and maternal health as well as through the United Nations International Day of the Girl, and even with this study.
What I'm trying to ask is, where is the middle ground? Where is the low-hanging fruit? We do want to move forward with this. We're very thrilled that there's so much activity, obviously, in the women's sector regarding business development, etc. You're right, Victoria. We're a very large country geographically with a very small population spread across it. Where's the low-hanging fruit?