Thank you, Chair.
The conversation this morning is very rich from both of the witnesses. I'm grateful for your work. I've just returned, along with many of my colleagues, from the United Nations status of women convention last week in New York, and the focus was entirely women's economic justice. There wasn't a single panel where pay equity and child care were not mentioned. Then many witnesses from around the world talked about the link between an absence of affordable child care and women inevitably falling into part-time work. They're the parent who falls back from their career, and that puts them into more precarious work, and there's a domino effect throughout a women's life.
I want to start with Martha Friendly. I note the letter that you wrote in combination with a number of other labour, social justice, and non-governmental organizations in November to Minister Duclos asking the government to create a universal public child care system and improve employment insurance access and benefits for precarious workers. There's a very nice linkage of those issues that we were hearing about last week at the UN. I'm interested in whether you've had a good response from the government to this letter. I'd also like you to elaborate on your concerns about parental leave changes by the Liberal government such as spreading parental leave over a longer time period without increasing that actual benefit.