Thank you.
I'm here representing the Child Care Advocacy Forum. We see child care as part of a comprehensive family policy that needs to provide both income supports and access to child care and early childhood development services. Our priority right now is clearly to get back on track a sustained multi-year federal commitment to transfer dollars to provinces in order to begin building the kinds of child care systems Canadian families need.
We think there continue to be other kinds of supports, and Michael and others can speak to those. We do not pit income support against investing in quality early childhood services. Canada can afford to do both. But our priority is—because the threat right now is the essential $950 million cut in federal transfer payments projected in the next fiscal year—to get that funding back on track.