This is something that I talk about in my sleep these days.
The universal child care benefit has two parts, as you probably are aware. The first is a $1,200-a-year allowance directly to the parents. This is a cash payment; it's not a tax credit or anything else, but a payment directly to the parents of each child under the age of six, right across Canada. This is regardless of their status or where they live—on reserve, off reserve, rural, or urban.
The purpose of this allowance is to provide parents with some resources to help them access the choice in child care that best meets their needs, whether it's nine-to-five in the city, seasonal, weekends, night shifts in other areas, staying home—whether it's one parent at home with the child or granny—or formal day care. We want to help parents because almost half of Canadian families have a parent staying at home. As well, we want to make sure they get some help if they need to go to the doctor and can't tote three toddlers along with them.
The second part of our plan is to create 125,000 new spaces for child care, right across the country, at 25,000 per year. We're going to be doing that by providing incentives—tax or otherwise—to businesses, both large and small, as well as to community and not-for-profit groups.
In the past, large businesses have been provided with incentives to create the spaces. That wasn't always an effective program. That's why we're going to be consulting, and these consultations have already begun with a wide range of stakeholders to make sure our program is designed to be effective and get those spaces created, so that parents will have even more choices of where they can get their child care.