Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will be supporting this motion. We started originally with the recognition that we really needed to move forward strongly and quickly on the early childhood development front, which is also handled by this department. We said we wanted to focus on the ages zero to three. The Minister chose to focus on junior kindergarten, so he developed a lot of support for that, and we saw the potential for it. It wasn’t that we disagreed with it. We had different priorities, but we went with the Minister’s priority, but with the important recognition that all of the research shows junior kindergarten can be very successful only, though, if it’s based on quality, and what is that quality? What is their definition of quality? It turns out it must be presented on an early childhood development basis. In other words, not a school program, not a hybrid program. It must be an early childhood development, an early childhood education program. Secondly, it must be delivered by early childhood education experts. There is a strong sense that the Department of ECE is failing on these critical points. Again, we have inconsistent and partial information that has led to confusion. So nothing is very clear on this.

This sense leads to the conclusion that the failure is derived from a lack of funding, or the recognition

that with the implementation of vital programs like Junior Kindergarten, new dollars must be provided.

While these children are small, as we have heard from the Aboriginal Head Start Council, the space and material needs are large, they’re critical and they’re expensive. We have to ask once again why did we do a pilot study in three communities if we weren’t going to provide an evaluation of these pilots for our reference? One has to ask, is it a lack of money? I mean, we’ve heard nothing on it.

Constituents have pointed out that the process itself is cheapening to junior kindergarten, the idea, the concept, the proposal. Where are the evaluations, where are the consultations, the funding that recognizes the potential to see value that a Junior Kindergarten Program could provide?

We need to put funding in place, keep it an ECD-based program delivered through early childhood education professionals that are required for quality. Failure has the potential to harm our youngest, as the research shows. Not only could it be neutral, but it can harm some aspects, and I repeat that based on research, while having impacts as proposed on the education presently being provided to the older children.

In October we called for a feasibility study of universal child care. Today we are contributing to the failure of the child care facilities we do have and, again, as we’ve heard from my colleagues, this remains unaddressed.

Aboriginal Head Start, it remains out there, tested, developed, evaluated and improved. Current proposals undermine this worthy effort and yet we have the opportunity to integrate with them and right away address some of the quality issues that we have.

This is a long list and my colleagues have elaborated on it. So I’ll stop there, but I will be supporting this motion. I hope the Minister, I’m not sure, if he doesn’t hear us today, I’m not sure what it would take. So, thanks to my colleagues for bringing this forward. Taima, c’est fini, mahsi.