CHRYSTIA FREELAND

Deputy prime minister and finance minister, speaking from Ottawa

The most bittersweet moment with my kids was reading a little essay for school that my son wrote. He's 11. And it was about what COVID had been like for him at school.... He said: `And my mother was really busy, so she wasn't really able to help me very much.' And then he wrote, `For understandable reasons.'

Just reading that I thought, `Oh, God,' you know, like, `Poor little guy.' Struggling, but then even understanding. And I think that's an experience so many Canadian parents, and maybe especially mothers, have had, of knowing it was hard for our kids, knowing we had other things we had to do as well, and feeling really badly for not being able to support our children as much as maybe they needed.