Thank you so much for your testimony. I have to say: what fantastic women! My mom was a stay-at-home mom as well. I am the middle child of three. I have two brothers: one younger, one older. I had the great pleasure of having my mom at home too, taking care of the home. When she retired at 65, she did not have CPP or sufficient RRQ—I'm from Quebec—contributions for her retirement, my dad being the working spouse. I know exactly what you're referring to.
Lynn, you mentioned that right now we're supporting a lot more working mothers, and there are many more women in the workforce now than in the past. I am a mother of two. I was an early bloomer as well. I had my first son at 20 and the second at 21. They're both out of the house and I'm able to do this job. What we have put in place is a child care benefit, which is a tax-free program for parents who, perhaps, want to stay home and raise their families and support them in that regard.
I know we've put some systems in place for families to be able to stay home and take care of the children when they're younger, but we've also increased the CPP contributions. We know that more and more people are not getting adequate CPP contributions, or not getting good private pension plans, or often work on contract.
We've increased that to 33% of contributions so that the next generation will be able to have more significant CPP contributions. But you've raised a really interesting point. To support stay-at-home parents—and I'll say “parents”, because we hopefully have some men who will stay home with their children as well—what would you recommend in terms of supports? Give us a concrete example of supports we could provide to acknowledge the contributions of a spouse staying home to raise their child or children? In terms of financial supports, what would you recommend we do to provide that option?
I want to say, Mary, that I'm also part of a military family, so kudos to you and your family for serving our country. Today's the 70th anniversary of NATO. I want to thank you and thank your husband for his service to Canada.
Can any of you give us some suggestions with respect to what we could do to help provide financial supports in addition to the CCB program?