Mr. Speaker, I wish that this House, in the last Parliament, enshrined early childhood education in legislation. If we had done that, if this Parliament had done so under the former government, then this new minority government would not be able to just tear up those agreements with the provinces with the stroke of a pen. It would have to come back to this House to seek a vote to cancel the legislation for early childhood education. I know that this new minority government would not be able to get that kind of legislation through this House of Commons.
I urge members of Parliament, on November 22, to support a national Canadian early learning and child care act. All future governments would not be able to tear up this kind of legislation. We would have early childhood education and any funding that we set aside, whether it is the $650 million this year or, hopefully, the $1.2 billion next year on early childhood education, would not be cancelled by a stroke of a pen or without having a debate here in the House.
I think it is critically important to have legislation to back up these agreements because without legislation the agreements would not be able to be implemented easily. That is number one.
Number two, in the past--