Mr. Speaker, my colleague asked a great question. We have touched on many other subjects today. He mentioned a 50% reduction in youth crime where there is an early childhood education component. It is of vital importance. We are now seeing the studies and data that prove to us the benefits of early childhood education, and I mean for the very youngest, even before a child is one year old. The trajectory dictates that with the right amount of education, a person will have a more fulsome and healthier life, and so on and so forth, as my colleague pointed out. The problem is that in this country right now we do not target the investment in this particular type of education.
What bothers me about this is that there is a satchel of money that is provided for day care, but that is not the point. The point is that the federal government does not say that it believes in early childhood education. It just gives a bit of cash and people can do with it as they may.
On the surface, it sounds like it is a wonderful thing that the government gives people money to do with as they want, but we also have to provide some of that money to people who are early childhood educators. They provide such an invaluable service. Since I am not an early childhood educator, I do not know the full benefits of what it is educators provide, but I can say they provide fantastic benefits and one of them is the reduction in crime that my hon. colleague spoke of.