Finance committee  Any benefits should go to all families and all parents and be means-tested, so yes.

Finance committee  A paper we wrote is called "Look Before You Leap: The Real Costs and Complexities of National Daycare” for a reason. It's not just a budgeting attempt of what national day care costs; it leads you to discuss and consider all of the very significant complexities. There will be nothing easy and nothing fast about putting this in place, and there is no way that it will be available as a COVID economic recovery plan.

Finance committee  I'll only say that there's plenty of peer-reviewed research that the U.S. is also considering, research by Canadian scholars of some repute—Baker, Gruber and Milligan, and Steven Lehrer at Queen's University—that shows poor outcomes for children. Child care is not about getting women into the workforce; child care is about the care of our youngest, and I think it matters whether they fare well in the type of care that they receive.

Finance committee  I truly believe that we can work with a realm of policy options, such as refundable tax credits for those using child care centres or something that could be tweaked in the provinces and be delivered more than just annually, which would provide financial relief to those most in need.

Finance committee  The research in Quebec has suggested that this is already happening. People of greater means are accessing the system on the backs of those who would most need it financially. I think there are various reasons for that. Ultimately, any kind of system that fails to identify those who are truly in need and creates a benefit for people who are the least in need of it strikes me as an inequitable way to provide child care.

Finance committee  Yes, that's definitely a concern that I have, and I have commentary from female leaders in the construction industry who have noted that this schedule of construction makes a universal program unfeasible for women and that what they need is something more agile and flexible. Whenever you work in a sector that is not nine to five, what we see in child care centre provision as one specific form of child care is that they generally cater to a nine-to-five work environment, which is at least part of the reason that it's inequitable and ends up funding people who earn higher wages, because these tend to be office jobs.

Finance committee  We believe that parents are the best bet for their children, and that they are capable and competent of choosing the right kind of child care that works for them. That could be a space in a centre, it could be a home-based day care provider, it could be a parent in the home, or juggling schedules as our family has chosen to do.

Finance committee  We did do a recent poll with the Angus Reid Institute asking about child care needs among parents and Canadians at large. What we found was a diversity of responses. When presented with any array of policy options, parents accepted each option by a high percentage. For example, a refundable tax credit, yes, they're interested in that; money to parents, yes, they're interested in that; a national system, yes, they're interested in that.

Finance committee  Indeed that's the viewpoint that we take. I would point to statistics from Statistics Canada and other polls and surveys suggesting that cost is not the first issue that parents face. Where cost is a problem, the money that goes to parents would allow us all to make our own decisions and choices.

Finance committee  Providing the money to parents is definitely a more equitable and efficient way, but first we have to address the supply side issues. To this, I would say that the Statistics Canada data that I have examined suggests that the supply is not as bad as we are told, and whether that's an issue or not is very diverse across the country.

Finance committee  Yes, absolutely. I will do so.

Finance committee  I'll turn to the example I cited in Quebec as to what happened. You saw the private providers leaving the industry as they couldn't compete, and then being brought back in with a tax credit later on. More specific to this moment, there was an article in the The Vancouver Sun, I believe, suggesting that the same thing is happening in British Columbia as they introduce their own provincial day care plan.

Finance committee  The short answer is no. I'm thinking of the people who live in the townhomes next to us, with shift work involved, with unusual work hours. One father stays home, while grandparents are being used down the street. These are all examples, me included, of people who would be excluded from any benefit under the billions of dollars being allocated to a national child care system.

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Every morning I work in taking care of my two-year-old. Every afternoon I work for Cardus, a not-for-profit think tank. The federal government thinks only one of these activities is worthy of federal support. Some afternoons my husband takes care of our two-year-old and other afternoons a paid helper does the same.

Status of Women committee  With regard to parents and mothers and fathers at home making choices around their child care, I think that even large sums of money to parents for them to be able to make those choices is a more effective policy decision than creating a bureaucratic system where the money doesn't ever reach the majority of children.