My name is Mélissa Castonguay Cossette, and I am here as the APF's administrator, but I am also the director of a francophone educational centre in Gravelbourg. I also sit on the parents committee of the École Beau Soleil, which is part of the Conseil des écoles fransaskoises, and on the committee of Gravelbourg's Association communautaire fransaskoise. So I sort of spread myself around. I am directly concerned by early childhood. My children attend the centre where I work. They are at the school, and we participate in the APF's activities as often as possible.
We at the APF are very pleased to see that $20 million will be invested in early childhood to support the training and professional development of educators and to help open more francophone educational centres in Saskatchewan. There is a glaring shortage of spaces in the educational centres, and waiting lists are very long. Parents put their names on a list as soon as they know they are expecting a child to ensure they have a space for the child at a francophone educational centre. Despite that fact, they do not always manage to get their children into a centre because the sector doesn't have enough spaces for babies, mainly, and toddlers.
This $20 million investment will really help to create new centres and provide more early childhood services, which will promote greater retention. There is a risk that children who do not attend a francophone educational centre may enrol in majority institutions, not continue their studies at a CEF school or follow the francophone community in general.
The APF always works with its partners, the Collège Mathieu and the Conseil économique et coopératif de la Saskatchewan. This is a major partnership effort. We are very pleased to be able to continue working as partners to find strategies for establishing better childcare services and better services for our educators. It is very hard to retain educators in the francophone early childhood sector in Saskatchewan. We have very good educators who take courses given by the Collège Mathieu. Those courses are subsidized by Saskatchewan's Ministry of Education, which is excellent. The girls come and work at an educational centre once they've completed their training. Once they've earned a level 3 and a diploma, they can easily find work elsewhere and earn better salaries. Salaries at Saskatchewan educational centres are not very high relative to those at other institutions. We often lose our educators. We train them, and we are pleased, and then they go away. The process then has to start over with new educators. Changing educators is not always ideal for the children, or for the centre.
If you want development by and for the communities, why not let our community choose the strategies it wants to put in place instead of setting funding limits and percentages? We were told that 33% of funding had to go to entrepreneurship and 66% to training. We would've liked to have a little more decision-making power because we're the ones who are on the ground and who know our community's early childhood needs. It's essential that the criteria and solutions proposed under the new early childhood funding framework be flexible and adapted to the needs of our communities.
In Saskatchewan, we really need to work on recruitment and labour retention and to create new educational centres in the communities that want them. Some Fransaskois communities have been waiting a long time for an educational centre. The $20 million will definitely help us help them.
We are counting on you to continue supporting the communities and the Association des parents fransaskois.
Thank you.