Status of Women committee  Thank you very much for having me today. I'm certainly very honoured and humbled to be here. I've been asked to share my story of entrepreneurship and leadership from my perspective as a rural Nova Scotian. Although I was asked to share the challenges of being an entrepreneur and a community leader as a rural Nova Scotian, to add a little colour for you I could add stories such as changing into my dress in the back of a minivan following a full day—I see some nodding around the table—and rolling in from board meetings to attend an awards gala for the inaugural Women in Business Award that I received for perceived work/life balance.

Status of Women committee  In towns and centres, there are always opportunities for the YMCA and other kinds of organizations to offer child care. However, the times of day that it is offered are certainly limited, so the accessibility of child care is limited for nurses, or other people who might do shift work at Michelin or other organizations.

Status of Women committee  Maybe I'll begin. I think that is part of a broader way to come at this issue, to look at those other options. What we also see in rural communities are grassroots organizations that connect women entrepreneurs. Through those connected networks of support, there could be some way of ensuring more universal child care and adequate safety and guidelines for what's happening in those homes.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. Local organizations such as CHAD transit in the Antigonish, and the transit organization they have in that community as well, Mr. Fraser, offer very innovative solutions for local communities, and they provide access. They're working very hard with their partners locally to provide more opportunities for transportation in those communities.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. We have to be very innovative in our approaches to child care. We must understand the different challenges that we have in rural communities, and that accessibility to such centres is not really an option. We also need to find ways to support women in rural communities who want to provide that service to families.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely, the Centre for Women in Business at Mount St. Vincent University offers some wonderful services to local women. We've accessed them through a group of associates that I have as well, to come in and do some work with us around growing our local businesses. That was something we had to invest in ourselves—to bring them out into the rural communities—so if we could have greater support for those kinds of organizations, which have two decades of experience in supporting women in business in rural and urban environments in Nova Scotia, that would be wonderful.

Status of Women committee  I think that's a simple and effective strategy. As I mentioned when I came in, I really wanted to focus on the strengths of rural Canada and rural women, and those already exist. If they were further supported, we could be very much augmenting the role that women can play in entrepreneurship in rural environments.