Thank you very much.
I've been invited to speak to you because I wear two different hats. One of them is that I'm the director of a neuroscience institute at York University, and the other one is I am the president of the Council for Early Child Development.
I won't try to go over all the material that was submitted to you, but I'll instead focus on two critical points that bear on this committee's decision-making, particularly as you try to come to terms with the cost-benefits of this kind of investment in early child development.
The first point relates to our understanding today of the extent of children with biological compromises that are going to significantly constrain their ability to flourish in a school environment.
There is a continuum of problems. These problems can range anywhere from the very severe, which will result in a child who has a diagnosable disorder, to a child with a relatively mild compromise, which will nonetheless significantly constrain the child's ability to pay attention, to form friendships, and to understand the rules and regulations of a school environment. We're talking about a very broad range of children. We estimate that anywhere from 50% to 60% of our children have various subtle or significant challenges in the ways they process information.
As we study how the brain develops, we also know that by the time a child is six or seven years old and the child enters school, the brain has established trajectories that are very difficult to change at that point. This is the reason we hear from so many educators and administrators that they essentially can predict how well a child will do in school from the child's very earliest experiences in a school environment. If we want to enhance a child's developmental potential, we have to reach the child very early.
The second point is directly related to this. Over the last five to seven years, one of the most exciting breakthroughs that have happened in developmental neuroscience is that we are growing very quickly in our capacity to identify children at a very young age who are displaying subtle signs in their capacity to pay attention, to regulate their own behaviour, or to understand someone else's communicative gestures. If we intervene with these children at this point--and such interventions are the kinds of things that can easily be done within child development centres such as the one we are proposing--we can either significantly mitigate or, in many cases, actually prevent the kinds of escalating problems that we are now seeing in our children today.
As we try to make sense of what's happening in our society, we see all kinds of stresses and physical, environmental, and social changes that seem to result in an increased number of the kinds of biological problems that I'm talking about. In part, it's simply a result of the kinds of demands we're making on our children; in part, it's a result of a rapidly changing social environment for children.
This bill presents us with the opportunity to discuss how we can institute a universal program. It has to be universal, because the science we're doing shows us these problems afflict all sectors of society. In fact, the largest number of children I see in my own institute come from relatively wealthy middle-class environments.
With this universal program, our intention is not only to enhance whatever the child's core capacities are; it's to pick up and prevent the escalation of these problems such that by the time they get into a normal school system, which is when they're generally identified, it's already very difficult to change that child's outcomes.
I will end on that, because I believe I am very close to my seven minutes. But please do let me know if you'd like me to expand on any of the remarks I have made.