Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise in support of this motion. I very strongly support this motion. The sentiments towards the need for early childhood development programming have been expressed by pretty much all Members here. I totally agree with the sentiments that have been expressed by my colleagues. I appreciate the actions that are currently being undertaken by the departments of Health and Social Services and Education, Culture and Employment. I believe it is a start. I believe it is a slow start, but I’m very glad to see that they’re doing some work and that they’re working together. Collaboration between these two departments is absolutely necessary.

I believe one of my colleagues, in their statement, talked about the fact that zero to preschool or to the start of school tends to be with Health and from anything within school years tends to be with Education. I feel quite strongly that we need to go beyond two departments working together. I think we need to establish one place where this work is done. We need to establish a lead person or a lead area within one of those two departments to take on this job. We have to clearly establish who is leading the development of the framework and who is going to lead the development of the program that is being asked for in this motion. I don’t think it’s a difficult thing to do. I think it is quite possible we can second people from one department to another. We can transfer people from one department to another. It is relatively easily done, in my mind.

The other thing that I think is extremely important and that there is not enough focus on – and we spoke to this a bit yesterday in Committee of the Whole – is the need to train early childhood

education staff. We don’t do enough of that. We don’t highlight those programs enough. We don’t market them. We don’t promote them with our residents. As was mentioned, we certainly don’t pay people enough for the jobs that they do. Many of them are committed and dedicated to their jobs, but we don’t pay them enough. I think that we ought to put a higher focus on our programming at the college and that we ought to put a higher focus on early childhood education teachers.

I think if we put money and effort into this particular issue, and more so than what we are currently doing for sure, we are not going to be out in the wilderness. We are certainly not ahead of the pack on this, but we would be doing a national movement. I believe right now that there is a large focus on ECD. We need to get there. It is so well documented, as Mr. Bromley alluded, and as any report will tell you, early development of children has a huge impact on the effect of their life later on.

We have so many of our residents who struggle with addictions, with drugs and alcohol, any number of difficulties. We have a lot of them who are affected by mental illness. Many of those issues start from an early age. They are developed when children are very young. If we can nip that in the bud, so to speak, and get the right environment for kids between zero and when they start school or even just zero to three and then work from there upwards, I think it is going to have a huge impact on our residents as a whole, but it will also, as I mentioned, have an impact on our bottom line and our budget; positive impact, not negative.

I think if we really believe in our Assembly priorities – and I mentioned it in my statement – we would be putting money into it. I talked about prevention and I talked about early childhood development. We are not, I don’t believe, in this budget, putting the emphasis on both of those two items that we should. We are speaking to the ECE budget today.

I fully support the motion and I strongly encourage my colleagues to vote in support as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.