Thank you very much. I must commend your pronunciation of my last name. It's a hard one to get.
It's so wonderful you came down here to St. John's. Thank you so much for providing this forum for us to be able to speak. I'm here on behalf of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. We're an organization across the country with 170,000 proud members from coast to coast to coast.
It's an exciting time in Canada right now. There are a lot of things being done, and it's an exciting panel this morning. I got to sit in and listen. There's a lot of talk about Scandinavian countries and the things they do right. I'm proud to be here today to talk about something else Scandinavian countries do a little better than we do, but our government has made commitments to follow that same policy decision, and that's providing affordable and accessible child care for every Canadian across Canada from coast to coast to coast.
I'm very happy that our government made a commitment this June with provinces and territories to negotiate an agreement and a separate agreement on indigenous early learning and child care. I think it's absolutely commendable and wonderful the government has taken this on.
The PSAC have some things we would like to see done on this. Originally the amount of funds earmarked only came in at $500 million. The International Monetary Fund put forward a proposal of around $8 billion in Canada. That's a lot to take on, especially for a government with the budget constraints we have, but we would like to see something in the ballpark of $1.2 billion.
You're interested in growing the economy and adding value. One of the ways we can do that is to make more Canadians able to go out and work and participate in the economy. We have parents who have to miss work day to day because of child care needs. There are gaps. We don't have one system that fits all. We have lots of jurisdictional issues. Quebec, like some provinces, is delivering affordable child care to Quebeckers. It would be great if we could do that in Newfoundland and Labrador as well.
We talk about labour shortages. One of the ways we can address labour shortages is by allowing Canadians to have that free time to be able to go out and participate in the economy, start a business, and go to work at any types of work that could be there. Child care jobs are jobs too.
I'm rambling a little, and I'm getting the signal. With that, I want to thank you again.