Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Minister, for 35 years, I helped train preschool teachers in the province of Quebec. I am an expert in preschool education and when I was a student in Quebec, Boston and London, I was taught a fundamental precept: children need to be taught, from kindergarten on, basic life skills so they can function in society.
In Quebec, since 1960, the kindergarten program, as well as the grade school program, is based on teaching children basic skills. The last part of the reform program basically brought everyone on board, including high schools. The program involves the acquisition of skills, transversality, transferability, and other such things.
Therefore, as Minister of Skills Development, you also have a hidden role as education minister. How are you going to live up to your double role, which makes you a little schizophrenic? You are minister of this and minister of that. The question is: how are you going to fulfill your role as Minister of Skills Development while respecting the Constitution of 1867, which gives the provinces full jurisdiction over education?