Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here today. I'll say a special hello to Botwood from Little Rapids. That's where I am today, Shealah.
Thank you both for your comments. As my colleagues know, I speak about really rural parts of Canada. As you know, Shealah, I'm in a really rural area as well. I agree with you all on your comments about connectivity. Connectivity was an issue long before COVID-19 hit, but it ripped off the band-aid.
I'm sure you have heard our commitments. We're well under way to have 98% of Canada connected by 2026. I hope I can count on my colleagues here to support the budget, because we added $1 billion to the universal broadband fund, which is making a difference.
One of the criteria under the new universal broadband fund—and part of it is in the rapid response stream—is affordability. That is one of the criteria boxes. I'm looking forward to rolling out more and more applications across the country, and I encourage people to apply, because we are well under way to reach our goal and connect more Canadians. We know that this is such an important component, especially as women recover and as small businesses recover in rural Canada everywhere.
It's interesting to see that people are coming to the rural parts of Canada—nothing against my colleagues in urban centres. They are coming to rural centres for fresher air, a better quality of life and bigger, open spaces, and we know how important the connectivity piece is there.
I welcome your comments, Ms. Anderson, on the child care piece. We are building the footprint for this now. There is no cookie cutter for it. It's about working with the provinces and territories on how it needs to be implemented, and it needs to be different in rural.
Ms. Anderson, I'd love your comments on that. If there were two pieces of advice.... You gave us one: It needs to be more flexible. What else would you say as we develop the child care piece for rural areas—and I mean really rural areas—across the country? What couple of criteria would you love to see in that piece as it gets [Technical difficulty—Editor], along with flexibility?