Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Canadian Teachers Federation coordinates and facilitates the sharing of ideas, knowledge and skills among its 17 provincial and territorial member organizations, which collectively represent over 215 000 teachers in primary and secondary schools across Canada.
In the brief that we presented, we decided to focus on two priorities outlined by the government, in particular. Those are, first, the promotion of measures to ensure Canadians are healthy and have the proper skills and appropriate incentives to work and save, and secondly, that Canada has the infrastructure required so that every Canadian can aspire to and achieve a high quality of life.
Our view, in particular, is that this budget should focus primarily on children and youth. We see this as the means to break a cycle that has accumulated over decades of non-discretionary expenditures that government has to make in order to redeem, rather than prevent, problems from occurring. I can refer specifically to enormous expenditures in terms of our justice system, our health care system, when measures designed to focus on prevention could have resulted and can still, for future generations, cut tremendous amounts of non-discretionary expenditures. We believe that there should be increased focus on learning initiatives at the level of government. I refer to an OECD study on page six of the English version, in which the OECD indicates that, on average, every year of education that a country adds to its citizenry accomplishments would increase per capita GDP anywhere from 4% to 7%, all other factors remaining equal.
We're particularly looking at the work the National Literacy Secretariat is doing to try to increase literacy levels in Canada. We believe that the secretariat requires additional support. We're looking at the modifications that should be made to the Copyright Act, to ensure more and easier access for students and teachers to publicly available Internet materials for which creators do not require payment. We're looking for an expanded federal role on particular elements of our population--I'm talking about aboriginal children and youth; I'm talking about immigrant and refugee children and youth. We feel that the current focus, particularly on immigrants and refugees, is on job training and language training. This is fine for adults, but there are many, many family-related issues. I think the government has indicated that family is a priority, and certainly in dealing with family issues there is much work that can be done that is not only individually applicable to the families themselves but to the collective responsibility that our country has to ensure that services are made available.
We believe that the publicly funded and regulated child care system that was embryonic in terms of development over a period of years is something that should be restored. There are multiple studies, in Europe in particular, that indicate the importance of this in terms of the learning process and in preventing problems that require heavier expenditures in the future.
Those are the areas, Chair, that we cover in our brief.
I must also express on behalf of our organization some concern about the timing of the announcement that came from the Department of Finance about the disposition of the $13 billion accumulated surplus. Regardless of the merits of that particular decision, it would seem to me that in the consultation process, which is ongoing and will be continuing for a period of months, it would have been important and interesting for government to at least listen to the stakeholders and the views they have on how that surplus should be dispensed.
I'll stop there. I would be more than happy to answer any questions that committee members may have on any aspect of our brief.