Status of Women committee  Thank you. I agree with you, Mr. Chong. You're exactly right that the diversity of the teaching force is very important, and it's very important to us too, so I appreciated that part of your comment. I'd like to, though, mention that what provinces decide is public education is

Status of Women committee  I think we're more concerned with having the service for women and children, not with getting involved in a debate as to whether it's a provincial or federal responsibility.

Status of Women committee  Some of the work that John mentioned in terms of the Campaign 2000, if you listen to them, or Make Poverty History—our work with them gives us some peace there. One interesting thing happened at our conference last Sunday. Our closing speaker was Tom Jackson, and he told us some

Status of Women committee  I can do it in five seconds.

Status of Women committee  What we want is the provision for adequately funded, universally accessible day care for all women and children.

Status of Women committee  In terms of women in general, those cuts removed the voices or eliminated the voices of some women. Immigrant women, women who are single parents, women who do not have huge educational opportunities already, women who have many stressors, battered women—all sorts of women look t

Status of Women committee  I was making the comparison that it wasn't a direct loss to women who are teachers. But we heard from many of our constituencies and many of our teachers that they've noticed the loss of programs in the communities in which they work. I know there was a movement to transfer som

Status of Women committee  I think in general the cuts to the status of women and literacy programs have affected women, not so much women who are teachers but women in general, women who perhaps lack the connections to be able to improve their lot, to improve their education. I don't suspect that those c

Status of Women committee  We would echo that as well. When we did some research on this, the Quebec system was far superior. I think it was one of the reasons the Canadian Council on Learning put their early childhood centre there. When they decided where to put it, it was founded in Quebec for that rea

Status of Women committee  Well, teachers are paid the same. If you have the same level of education and the same level of experience, men and women are paid the same, so the actual salary is the same. What we were talking about is average salary, because then you take into account the fact that women lea

Status of Women committee  Picking up on your question, in terms of the fact that it's not just child care, it optimally is early childhood development, which is so critical to success for children later on in their careers. If you examine the wages that are paid to these workers, you'll agree that you are

Status of Women committee  Thank you, John. Thank you to the committee. The conference was a rousing success. If we seem a little tired, it's because we were running hard for the last three days, getting that finished. Thank you, again. I'm going to talk a little bit about the numbers of women in teach