Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm requesting amendments as follows. I have a few here. First, I would replace lines 21 and 22 on page 7 with the following:
grams and services, funding and activities that support early learning and child care, as well as strategies to support recruitment and retention of a well-qualified workforce;
I would replace line 23 on page 7 with the following:
(b) regularly conduct engagement activities on matters relating
I would replace line 25 on page 7 with the following:
tem, including the availability of child care services, the number of families on waitlists for child care places and any progress made in reducing the number of families on waitlists;
I would add after line 28 on page 7 the following:
(d) prepare and make public an annual progress report.
You can see again, Mr. Chair, that I'm just trying to strengthen this bill, for a variety of different reasons.
Obviously, from witnesses and testimony that we've heard, the workforce has been a massive issue. The wait-lists continue to increase. We had one witness testify that they had 3,000 spaces, and 12,000 people were on the wait-list. Many centres are closing down because they just can't recruit the staff.
With these amendments, we're hoping we can strengthen that, as well as the progress report, because if there's no measurement for success, if there's no accountability, it's very hard to be successful or to change, adapt or pivot to ensure that what we're doing is in fact working.
Thank you.