I'm going to take a different focus. I've spent most of my adult life working with women who are very diverse and very vulnerable and trying to move them from that position through what I call a tool, the tool being self-employment. I work a lot in northern Ontario. That's where my paid job is, all across northern Ontario, where the diversity is huge and the geographic distance is huge. That's where I'm speaking from.
I want to commend this government for initiating their national framework on early learning and child care and their promise to do further investment of $2.6 billion up to 2019-20. That's very encouraging, but I want to reiterate what Valerie was saying, which is to not leave out the huge percentage of women who don't fit the general criteria for this kind of child care. When we're looking at this national framework, don't forget to include self-employed women. A lot of them are choosing self-employment now because of the precarious employment situation. Self-employment is part of that, and these women need high-quality, flexible, and affordable child care.
I want to zero in on the first nations women, the indigenous women, because 51% of aboriginal independent businesses are either owned or partly owned by women. They're a driver of jobs and opportunities in indigenous communities, so we have to look at where they're situated.
The reality of their lives is that they lack this kind of high-quality child care, but in the indigenous community, elder care also is a very big priority for indigenous women. If they don't have this support, they're not going to be able to move ahead in their businesses in the way that they need to. When we're looking across Canada now and at that huge potential, if we ignore it, it's just not going to happen. That's really important.
In fact, with the changing job market we have now, some of the reports are saying that as technology takes over, women are going to be the most vulnerable because of their kinds of jobs. Now if you go into McDonald's to order your hamburger, you see technology is going to take away a job, generally from a woman. In our social supports for women, which are really important, we must look at this segment of the population, and that includes self-employment.
I want to spend another brief minute talking about women entrepreneurs and innovation, because the trend now is to support businesses through the innovative incubators, the innovation centres and so on, and the mainstream business development centres. The trend is to support businesses that are from younger people, leaving out a lot of women. These are businesses in innovation, technology, and STEM. Women don't fit. These incubators are not inclusive to women, and that's going to cause a major gap in how women move forward in our economy as entrepreneurs.
I'll leave it at that and open it to questions.