Thank you, Madam Chair.
Congratulations on your new appointment.
Welcome, Mr. Aldag, to our committee. I look forward to the opportunity to get to know you.
I'm going to start with Mr. Sierzycki this morning...or this afternoon, I guess it is. It's been a long day.
I have a couple of questions for you in the context of some of the comments you made, the first one being around investments in early education.
I had a very wise man tell me recently that, if we want to improve graduation rates anywhere, whether it's on reserve, off reserve or in non-indigenous schools, we should focus on the reading rates from kindergarten to grade 3. It's a longer-term investment, but we have to start giving them that opportunity. You talked about some of the investments the Province of Saskatchewan has made in early childhood learning and intervention. I just want to give you an opportunity to speak a little bit further to that for a couple minutes. Then I'll move on to another question.