Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, I appreciate all the comments from my colleagues. I think Ms. Bisaro has said it well. There is a lot of spring boarding from the issues that we’re discussing, which is the role of the impacts of screen time and branding on small children and how we are going to deliver our early childhood development programs to try and avoid that. I think that’s what we’re talking about here. Many of the comments I heard I agree with, and I don’t see them as necessarily inconsistent with what I’m talking about, and I will say, quite frankly, corporations I see as having big value and have a role to play, many roles to play in our society. I see the iPads as a heck of a useful tool and Internet as playing a big role in today’s education, so those questions are not being debated, though I’m happy to hear the comments and perspectives of my colleagues.
A couple of comments I did want to highlight, Mr. Dolynny’s especially. He grew up with a block of wood. Raise your hands. How many of us grew up with a block of wood? This sounds flippant in a way, but no, that is the rub. Do you know that block of wood remains one of the most fundamental tools in early childhood today because it enables innovation. The other thing is many of us grew up in the outdoors, an incredibly complex world and that alone enables innovation and full development of the brain. As seemingly straightforward as that is, that is a huge point that I’m trying to raise here. The iPad certainly enables all kinds of learning, and Mr. Dolynny referred to his children’s drawing on that. I’m not taking away from that. I am talking about early childhood here. But iPads and screens generally do have these proven impacts and tend to limit.
I believe he said iPads that enable kids to have the jobs, and I say what we’re talking about here is having the jobs versus creating the jobs. I’d say Chevron… Sorry. Many corporations…and that’s the first time I’ve said a corporate name. Many corporations would love you to have the job, but I think this government would love to create the jobs, and that’s at least the motivation for what I’m talking about today.
The taxation problem has been mentioned, and I think there’s lots of fruitful room for discussions there. The underlying issue have been mentioned, and I hope my colleagues would agree that early childhood development has been a huge issue for me. I’ve tried to push hard on it in providing a lot of resources, and I tried to be a leader in our move towards developing and delivering early childhood education and development programs, and that’s because, like everybody in this room, I really do care for the young people and our smallest children as well as our youngest families that we’re trying to address with this program. I realize that this can be taken as taking away iPads from a family, but I am also trying to look at the big picture on what the net benefits will be, is there an alternative way that we should be delivering these programs that are proven to be more effective and could be done with the budget we have at hand.
On the remote possibility that this motion gets defeated here today, I hope the Minister will do some evaluation of the impact of iPads and branding and screen time on kids. This is an opportunity to actually put some information on what the impacts are. I know we’ve bought some iPads ourselves, but I don’t see any evaluation. I see us just jumping into a wholehearted – you know, deliver this regardless – program, so I think some evaluation of it with being cognizant of these potential impacts that science demonstrates would be worthwhile.
Again, portraying it as a philosophical issue. Au contraire. I think there is a lot of evidence in the literature that these are real issues, and it’s probably a body of literature we’re not all familiar with. I’m certainly not as familiar with it but I have had research drumming up some information on it and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve also learned a lot from the debate today. I’ll leave it at that. I know we’ve spent a long time at this and I appreciate the thorough discussion we’ve had.