Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for the question, Mr. Godin.
For many years, the primary concern has been the way funding flows from Ottawa to the provinces and especially how it reaches these provinces’ current accounts. We could give you all sorts of examples where the amounts allocated by Ottawa don’t align with what actually makes it to communities and particularly to French-language school boards.
For example, there have been instances where the provinces have used the monies allocated by the federal government through the official languages in education program, OLEP, to fund expenditures that would ordinarily fall under provincial jurisdiction. For example, if an English-language school board has a computer specialist, it goes without saying that the French-language school board would similarly be entitled to have a computer specialist paid for with taxpayer dollars. There are many examples of this type of situation.
I have a feeling that early childhood education is the next area where we are going to run into problems. I’m not sure we’ll have the ability to keep track of these millions of dollars from the federal government meant to fund day care spaces and that the amount from Ottawa will align with the amount that actually makes its way to day cares and early childhood centres. As such—