Thank you very much.
I'm Morna Ballantyne. I'm going to share the seven minutes with Sue.
Thanks very much for the opportunity to be here with you.
I'll take a few minutes to explain what Code Blue is. We're actually not an organization; we describe ourselves as a “campaign” that has the support of a number of organizations and a number of individuals.
I was going to print out a list of all the individuals who support our campaign. I actually have a printout of half of our supporters--and it's here, but I'm not going to unroll it, because it's 85 feet long--just to give you a sense of who we represent and that we are representing large numbers of Canadians who are concerned about the state of early learning and child care in Canada.
We're very excited that Parliament and your committee are once again addressing a piece of legislation regarding early learning and child care. It's of course not the first time. This issue has been on the political agenda for many years.
I'm a parent of two children. I consider myself to be one of the relative newcomers to this issue, having been involved for 22 years. I got involved when I was pregnant with my first son.
This is an issue that is not going to go away until we have a system of early learning and child care, not just in Quebec but in all of Canada.
We want to make it clear that Bill C-303, in our opinion, which we support, does not in fact give Canadians everything that we need and want with respect to child care policy and programs. In fact, it's only one government instrument that's required. There are lots of other instruments that are required to be put in place by different levels of government, community, and individuals.
We've been following your committee deliberations very closely--I've been in attendance at every one of your hearings--and we are incredibly impressed with the attention you're giving to this issue, to this legislation. We're also impressed with the excellent submissions made by other witnesses.
But we think that there is still a lack of clarity about what this bill does and doesn't do. We've tried to summarize in a handout--in case you're wondering where that handout came from, that's from us--in a chart, some of the aspects of the bill. We hope that will help to clarify some of the myths and some of the realities.
One of the things we want to make clear is that we think this piece of legislation is actually very simple and straightforward. In fact, the representatives from the justice department testified to that.
It's certainly not advancing anything new. There's been a suggestion that it's not right or it's not proper for a piece of legislation to try to deal with this very complex issue. But in fact this legislation deals with issues that have been on the table, the subject of public and political debate and the subject of very complex federal-provincial negotiations, for many years.
Bill C-303 in fact represents a consensus of what the federal government needs to do. It also reflects what we know are the best practices in early learning and child care.
Sue is going to emphasize some of the other aspects of what the bill does and what it doesn't do.