Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.
I'm glad to be here talking about one of my favourite topics, digital literacy, being a Luddite when it comes to this and having grandchildren who know far more than I do about all of it.
This is a topic that's close to my heart as a teacher. As you may know, I was on the Canadian Teachers' Federation executive for a number of years and on their board of directors. This issue has been a great concern to the teaching profession right across the country. They have been calling on governments at all levels to do more in this area, both in the teacher training aspect of it, but also in providing resources, by way of curriculum and tools that can be used in the schools, as well as by doing some pre-school work with parents. We know how challenging this can be.
It's always great to have somebody here from my home province, and from Victoria, one of my favourite cities.
My first question is for Matthew and Jane; either of you can answer it.
How has the elimination of the community access program impacted access to digital literacy training in Canada?
I'm specifically interested in a comment you made in which you talked about Australia and the U.K. taking this issue a little more seriously than we do. Could you explain what drove that comment from you? Are we providing enough resources as a federal government to ensure that we have the kind of literacy we need for our youth?