Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would also like to thank the witnesses who are taking part in this meeting. Their input is most relevant to the work of this committee.
It is very inspiring to hear you and to see your determination to move forward despite the difficulties.
The portrait that is painted for us, from one testimony to the next, is extremely depressing. Last time, I asked a question about hope. I asked if there was still hope. The dedication and determination you show is what keeps us hopeful. So thank you very much for who you are and what you do.
I would first like to address the representatives of the Fondation Paul Gérin-Lajoie. You have quoted, both in a press release and on your website, this statement by Nelson Mandela:
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
However, as mentioned earlier, between 250 million and 260 million school-age children are not in school. As you are involved in operations both at home and abroad, you know that ensuring that children in a developed country are literate, are interested in reading, grammar, writing and spelling, and perform well in these areas, is already a challenge. Of course, one might think that the situation is even more complex in developing countries.
There was already a problem with the structures that enable learning in developing countries. Yet we were told repeatedly that these difficulties were exacerbated by the pandemic. As we know, students in Canada and Quebec have difficulty maintaining their motivation and level of achievement because of distance learning. For logistical reasons, this is an additional challenge.
This exacerbated situation leads us to believe—I am referring here to a World Bank statistic—that closing schools for three, five or seven months or even longer will eventually result in a loss of income for these children. This crisis will therefore have the effect of increasing poverty in the long term. That's probably why one of the witnesses told us—I think it was again a representative of the Fondation Paul Gérin-Lajoie— that we are witnessing perhaps the most serious education crisis in history. Added to that is the difficulty in accessing the vaccine in developing countries.
In a simple, orderly, systematic way, what could be done to address this series of multifaceted problems we are currently facing? Where should we start and in what order should we proceed?