Thank you very much.
Let me begin by saying it's a privilege for both my colleague, Jeff Thiessen, and me to be here with you this morning. We're fairly new to the discussion at this level, for sure.
I will attempt to try to speak to you regarding some of the grassroots situations. Both Jeff and I, over a number of years, have put a number of resources toward early childhood care in trying to ensure that our children are very well cared for.
I am a minister in Barrie, Ontario, where my wife and I began a church ten years ago. We established this place of faith in a very fast-growing community, and quite quickly we realized that the best way to touch a community is to touch children--to really impact their lives, and get involved with them.
Barrie has a slogan that says that the city is the people. It's a great mission statement. Obviously there are all kinds of discussions regarding mission and vision statements out there, and Barrie is a prosperous, growing community--there's no question about that--but behind the growing city there are absolutely a number of growing needs that we began to encounter at a very grassroots level. My thinking over the last ten years has been that federally, provincially, and locally, governments have to really begin to understand what is going on at a very grassroots level, and there are some serious needs.
The scope of attempting to meet the needs is wide and varied and needs to be at least considered. There are many different options for touching the grassroots people, the people who really need help.
Economic and family vitality is absolutely what we're about. We are trying to focus on that. We are absolutely trying to do all we can to interact with families at a very base need. Our own assembly.... Again, I'll speak maybe three words: economic and family vitality, adequacy...whatever we do regarding the children of our country and our communities has to be adequate. That means, in my world, that we're not looking for a bottomless money pit, but we need to assess the individuals who have needs. There needs to be some kind of consideration given to transferring funds to places and people with different needs and different challenges.
I see this as a very trying.... Put aside the political; this is trying. We need to help families. In fact this week, maybe even today, at my daughter's own school in Barrie there have been two suicides in the past two weeks--two, by young people, and possibly even a death pact. I'll be waiting to hear of a third child from the same school. For me, my daughter attends that school, and we try to impact and influence the community just down the street.
We have to do better. We just have to get involved and do more, not just based upon economic truths and realities, but what is absolutely going to help encourage our children to resist the challenges and the crises that they are facing as they grow older.
It's monumental, in my mind. Adequacy becomes absolutely important. I don't believe it's an either/or thing. Parents who go out to work shouldn't be penalized for that. The single demographic in our own community is growing by leaps and bounds. There is a need to get out there, but you shouldn't penalize those who are staying at home and trying to raise their children, so there should be something more inclusive, something larger than what I see here.
Third, I'd like to consider the reliability. We need to begin to explore options--trustworthy places, whether in family or in non-profit, trustworthy places where we can begin to allocate funding that's going to make a difference. I would even suggest that maybe, on just rationally sound thinking, we would consider even some faith initiatives out there that have proven track records--somewhere we could begin to explore and see some really worthy people and places and non-profits that have supported the community over the years.
We need to create criteria and measuring sticks so that we can absolutely qualify that this is a good place or this is a good situation, and open up the doors to help at this grassroots level.
I believe that there are communities of faith out there, places and people, absolutely doing what you're looking for, but without any help of any kind. I applaud the government right now for the $1,200 subsidy and all of that help, but we need to get bigger. We need to get larger in order to facilitate strong family units. We've got to get bigger. You've got to get out of the box and think big, and I know you're attempting to do that.
Again, we're fairly new at this. All I'm saying is that at a very grassroots level, we're doing all we can to assist families in our community, to help them and to encourage them. We have all kinds of infrastructure within our community, within our organization, that the city is having a hard time providing for. There are different ways to go about--