Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to your parliamentary committee. I would like to welcome you and thank you for being here with us. My warmest congratulations to all of you on the quality of your French. It's really impressive. We appreciate it, and I know that Mr. Lemire joins me in extending our congratulations.
Ms. Hogan, there is one sentence in your report that comes up a lot. I am paraphrasing here a bit, but I think it goes something like this: “We found that provincial and territorial governments, outside of Quebec…”.
I mention this because Quebec has had its own system in place for over 30 years. As Mr. Lemire so aptly put it, it was under the aegis of Pauline Marois, who later became premier of Quebec, that this system was developed and that the early childhood centres, or CPEs, that inspired Ms. Freeland were created in 1997.
Is this not proof that the federal government is intruding into an area of jurisdiction that is entirely provincial, and that the provinces, and Quebec in particular, are capable of working things out for themselves, without the federal government interfering in their affairs?