In the course of the public consultations, we clearly heard that immigration and early childhood were important issues.
I would also like to thank my colleague Parliamentary Secretary Sean Casey, who is working very hard on all those matters.
When it comes to early childhood, we took two measures before we even announced the plan.
The first measure is part of Budget 2017. We announced $80 million over 10 years for community infrastructure that sustains the vitality of minority language communities—I'm talking about kindergartens, cultural centres or school-community centres. We know that this will help communities in a general sense and provide useful infrastructure. We are currently in discussions with the provinces and territories regarding their requests and the management of those requests.
That is an example of horizontal leadership, as I am working very hard with my colleague the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, Amarjeet Sohi, to ensure that funding is set aside for those elements in the community infrastructure envelope.
Concerning early childhood, as you saw, our colleague Mr. Duclos made an important announcement this week. He announced $7.5 billion in funding over 11 years and a national framework on early childhood.
That framework specifically mentions the importance of having early childhood services to counter the assimilation of francophone communities and ensure education continuity for children from different minority language communities. Now that the framework has been implemented, one thing is very important. I am following up with Minister Duclos on that issue by ensuring that bilateral agreements with the provinces contain concrete targets that could be implemented.