Madam Chair, I will take this.
It's very interesting to see the traditional role that women are still.... Certainly, my research showed that men have one more hour every day of free time. Women are busier with children, parents, groceries and everything else. Our women soldiers are a lot busier than their counterparts. We have to take that into consideration.
In the military we are posted all over the world, all over Canada, away from our family. I'm super close to my mom, but I was never close in terms of physical space. I was in Halifax and she was in Ottawa. So when you have an emergency.... Day care is really a source of stress. You have up to a year of wait time for access to day care under the age of five. It's very difficult when you move. When you're very far from family, you don't have access to family, and you need to find day care. The operational world starts. You get posted and you deploy right away.
That access to day care is super important, as is access to shift care. The military doesn't work from nine to five. We work 24-7. We need access to shift and emergency care. I remember flying a Sea King and landing in a parking lot. My husband was at sea. The day care closed at six. I was not there to go and pick up my children. Who's going to do that?
It's important to have those mechanisms in place so that we provide support for men and women—mostly women, again, because of the traditional values. If we want to keep our personnel, that's what we have to provide.