I absolutely support a liveable wage for early childhood educators, and I have been in a lot of discussions with provincial and territorial counterparts on this issue.
This legislation, as I mentioned, is about the federal role. Wages are the purview, when it comes to child care, of provinces and territories; however, the multilateral frameworks and the legislation highlight quality. Obviously we can't have quality if we don't have a talented, caring, well-compensated workforce. Each of the agreements requires that provinces and territories put forward plans to recruit and retain ECEs.
We've seen over the past year many provinces and territories put wage top-ups in place. Often they're not as much as is needed, but I can say that for all of my provincial and territorial counterparts, this is the number one thing they are working on this year. For the national advisory council, that's the first piece of work they're doing as well.