I wanted to take it one step further. We've talked about the parents and economic security of the family, and of course that's important in terms of the quality of life and the opportunities that the child experiences, but I come from the education system, and one of the things I was very interested in, or noted as an educator, was the disparity in preparedness among those children coming in. I taught at the secondary level, so by the time I saw these little souls, they were pretty well hard-wired, for better or for worse.
Further to that, we know that the first six years of a child's life are absolutely critical in terms of laying the foundation for their success. One of the things I saw was that by the time they came into my classroom, the learning disabilities, the problems in terms of coping and making adjustments for whatever challenges they might face were gone.
In your brief you talked about the patchwork of services across the country—excluding Quebec, of course—and the fact that this inconsistency exists. It brings me back to the concern about children and the benefits of child care and early childhood education. I'm wondering, does the current federal child care plan, the arrangement that's in place now, contribute to these inconsistencies? Does it undermine the possibility, or our hope, that children have a better foundation so that they can be contributors?