Thank you, Mr. Chair. As the Minister noted, one of the commitments in the Early Childhood Development Action Plan was the promotion, awareness and education initiatives related to early childhood development and making those available to all families and communities. We do know, of course, that parents play an important role. Getting information out to parents and caregivers is an important part of making sure kids get the support they need. One of the actions was that we would have target campaigns that would raise awareness about the importance of early childhood development and focus on getting that message out to parents and caregivers.

We do have money. We had set money aside in the ECD budget between ECE and ourselves. We have identified two key areas of focus for the social marketing campaign. ECE is taking the lead on getting messaging out about spending quality time with children, the importance of parents spending time with kids, supporting kids, kids getting enough sleep, reading to your kids and so on.

The Health and Social Services element of the social marketing campaign will be linked to our oral

health strategy, and we want to have a big awareness on oral health, on how important it is that kids eat the right kind of foods, what parents can do in the early days.

A lot of people in communities don’t have access to dental services and a lot of parents of young kids aren’t even aware that they need to be thinking about oral health in the early days. This is something that has been in the action plan in the beginning. It’s been budgeted for since the beginning and we’re hoping to roll it out over the next year. Thank you, Mr. Chair.