Speaking Notes  

for

Ken Dryden, Minister of Social Development  

Signing of an Agreement on Early Learning and Child Care
Bow Valley Child Care Centre

Calgary , Alberta

  July 7, 2005

Thank you Minister Forsyth. I’m happy to be here with you today for this very important event. I’d first like to thank those of you who have worked so hard for so many years to see this happen. Those of you who are parents, those of you who are stakeholders, those of you who have been part of the early childhood community, thank you. I’m glad you’re here. This is your day.

I used to write books and I learned in writing books that the easiest chapter to write was the last chapter, because if you get the first 19 chapters right the last chapter almost writes itself. All the details and explanations have been laid out; there’s no place left to go other than that right and final step. Those of you who are here and those like you in the other provinces and territories of this country have written those first 19 chapters. The rest of us are here just to help you write the 20th. So congratulations to all of you for writing those initial, great, first 19 chapters.

We are here in a childcare centre and for any parent or child, for any citizen, to know why we are here, doing what we’re doing, all you need to do is look around at the kids playing, interacting, exploring, adventuring, doing, their eyes alive and engaged. It’s all right here. This is, of course, what early learning and childcare can be, and the exciting part is that in five years, or ten, it will be so much more and better in ways we can’t even imagine. It will be better because, as parents, as citizens, as business people and media, we will see the possibilities of it and we will push to make it better. Because, no longer a patchwork of good and bad and non-existent, it will have the understanding and ambition and sense of importance to all of a real early learning and childcare system in every province and territory in the country.

A little more than a year ago, despite the near heroic efforts of so many of you over so many years, not much was happening to drive this forward, and not much was foreseeable in the years ahead. Then came a commitment during last year’s election campaign, then came last February’s budget, and now we are here today.

The key had been to give early learning and childcare a push, $5 billion dollars over five years but—crucially—with a goal, with the right, ambitious goal to create a system of early learning and childcare in every province and territory in the country, to set it in motion, to give it a chance. And that is what we are doing today.

Under this agreement in principle, Alberta will receive about $490 million over five years for quality, regulated early learning and childcare. Like all the agreements we have signed with other provinces, today’s is guided by a nationally-shared vision embodied by the QUAD principles that the federal government and the provincial and territorial governments all agreed upon last fall.

These principles are:

One: quality—to ensure the children receive high quality care in a regulated environment with trained staff;

Two: universal inclusiveness—to ensure that care will be available to all including those with special needs and that diversity will be respected;

Three: accessibility—to ensure that care will be affordable and broadly available, and;

Four: developmental—to ensure that care will include a component that supports the social, emotional, physical and cognizant development of a child.

This agreement, like those with the other provinces, also includes a commitment from Alberta to prepare a multi-year plan and to produce an annual report on early learning and childcare—because we’ve agreed that we all need to be accountable to our citizens for how their money is being spent.

Yet while all these agreements follow a common outline and common objectives, none is exactly the same as the others. The principles are the same, the expectations are the same, the ambitions are the same. But how each province and territory reaches them—that depends on them.

Quality early learning and childcare can mean a whole range of approaches. It can mean group childcare centres like the one we’re in today. It can mean supervised home childcare, head-start programs, part-time pre-school programs. It can mean flexible new ways to meet the requirements of families where parents work part-time in a seasonal job or outside standard working hours, or for families in rural areas. It is the same in all the six agreements we have signed. It is up to each province and territory to decide the right mix of approaches in the right amounts to meet the early learning and childcare needs of parents and kids to reach our nationally-shared vision and goals.

I would like to thank Minister Forsyth for her commitment to quality early learning and childcare for the parents and children of Alberta . You in Alberta have a strong history in education. In national and international tests, your elementary and high school students score near the very top. You are proud of that. You are proud of your education system. What we’re talking about today is early learning and childcare. This, too, is part of the learning and development of a child, and with each passing year we know better just how important these early years are.

I have no doubt that in the years to come, you in Alberta will approach early learning and childcare with the same ambition as in education—and with the same results—and feel the same pride in your achievements.

Today is a good day, a good day for parents and kids, a good day for those who have been involved in early learning and childcare often for decades, who have stayed with it because they love seeing kids develop and learn and grow, who love to see lights go on in their eyes, and who have stayed with it through struggle and frustration because they believe in it.

And it’s a good day in another way. In politics I’ve learned there is noise and somewhere in behind the noise there is the prize. And the challenge is not to be distracted by the noise but to work over, under, around and through it, however, whatever, to get to the prize. Today is a reminder of why any of us gets involved in politics. Today is a reminder of why politics matters. Thank you .