Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for attending today.
I want to start out with child care. We're seeing this CWELCC program and Bill C-35 being rolled out and discussed in the House right now. Anybody who's been following this or who works in the industry knows there's significant burnout. Wages are not keeping people in this industry. I have letters here in front of me from a day care in Simcoe County that has had to shorten its hours because of labour shortages.
The promise is 250,000 early child care workers. This is wading into a lot of provincial jurisdictions when we look at child care and these agreements. You're already wading into that kind of jurisdiction, so at a federal level, there's a lot of anticipation that you will have a national strategy around how you're going to meet these demands.
I'm curious what that is. This number is lovely, and it's lovely to hear that you're going to hire this many, but you can't even retain or recruit the people you need now. Why wasn't a national child care strategy put into that bill? Do you have one?