Yes, it would be an excellent recommendation if the objective of the committee is to come up with recommendations that would contribute to economic growth, to gender equality and to the well-being of families and particularly of young children under the age of six who are lacking in adequate services. It's not enough to just recommend broad objectives, though. We need recommendations specifically around money. The Liberal government has to recognize and act on the fact that the funding commitments at this point, although welcome—because we went for many years without any funding commitments at the federal level—are simply inadequate to be able to actually build the system we need.
I wouldn't agree with you entirely that nothing has happened in the last year. There have been developments, particularly at the provincial and territorial levels. Some have been good. Some have not been so good. We've had some recent provincial elections, and one in particular might result in major rollbacks on some of the improvements we saw in the last 12 months.
What we need through the federal budget is a more robust commitment of funding, but also with some conditions attached to that funding. We also need timetables and a requirement that measures be taken so we can actually see change that really becomes entrenched. Right now we're just getting patches to a very broken market-based system, and what we really need is a very different kind of approach and system to child care.
Because we have so many witnesses from important sectors of the economy, I want to suggest that that kind of investment will deal with labour force challenges across the economy, across the sector and across the country. You're not going to see great changes in the participation of women in sectors of the economy where they continue to be largely excluded unless there is a firm policy in support of child care and other family supports. It's just not going to happen.
