I would say on the federal child care spaces initiative—and we know there are large employers, both public and private, who might have the capacity or interest in investing their own resources in creating child care spaces—there are two major problems with this. One is that it really cuts out a whole swath of communities across the country, particularly, I would say, in Ontario, where there are not large employers, where you're really cutting out smaller employers. For them, although they would love to participate and would love to create child care spaces, the cost of creating that space and operating that space over the long term in a stable, high-quality way is just far too high.
It has been tried in Ontario before, under the Harris government, and, quite frankly, there wasn't very much uptake. There were some large corporations and public employers who did this; however, when it came down to it, a lot of them didn't follow through. It was truly unfortunate.
So the first issue really is on the uptake, the interest, and the capacity to invest in this over the long term.
The second issue is that although it's great--I'm very pleased to hear that Maple Leaf Foods and other large public and private employers would be interested in creating these spaces in their workplaces--the fact is that it takes it out of the community. One of the benefits of the system we advocate for, this non-profit, universally accessible system, is that it really ties in families with their communities, it increases their involvement in communities, and it allows the child care services and programs to really be customized to the community's needs--not just the workforce's needs, but the community's needs. I think that's a huge factor.
So, yes, absolutely, I applaud the idea of employers being willing and interested, but I think there's a greater need than that, and that comes from the communities.