Thank you, Madam Chair.
I too want to extend my appreciation to all the witnesses today for some really important testimony.
Dr. Timmons, you told a story very similar to one I grew up with. My grandmother couldn't go past grade 8. She had to work on the family farm and other farms to contribute to the income of the family, to feed the family, which made it so important for my mother, seeing that inability of my grandmother to access education, to strive and to work so hard to ensure that this wouldn't happen—and certainly, as her daughter, for me as well.
In terms of access for education, I'd like to build on that. There are numerous studies pointing to the importance of early access to education and what that early learning and child care mean. Certainly, for women and people who are in a lower income, access to early education increases lifelong prospects of earning capacity, increased productivity, reduced use of health and social services, reduced criminal justice costs and improved social determinants of health.
With regard to that extension of education, how do you see it impacting the students who are going into higher learning? We've talked a lot, especially over this pandemic, about the cost of tuition and the impacts on students who, as you said, aren't able to earn as much money to afford that education. I would like you to comment on the importance of not only addressing what we are trying to talk about here in the House of Commons—about eliminating interest that students pay on those extreme student loans—but also the importance of addressing the cost of tuition, the loans themselves, and the ability for students to not have to worry about such a debt sentence when they're trying to achieve something like higher education.