Human Resources Committee on May 3rd, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

As to the order of reference of November 22, the committee will now resume its study of Bill C-303.

I'd just like to thank all the witnesses for being here today. I know we have a couple via video conference.

We can start with you, Mr. Quist. We'll have you start, for seven minutes. We'll move then to Ms. Smith, Ms. Ward, Ms. Coupal, and Ms. Landriault.

If we can get started, I'll give you a two minute- then a one-minute warning, just so you can gauge your speech from there. It'll be followed by a round of seven minutes, followed by subsequent rounds of five minutes each.

Mr. Quist, once again, welcome, and thank you for being here today. You have seven minutes, sir.

[Dave Quist, Executive Director, Institute of Marriage and Family Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and to all members of the committee, for the opportunity to present information for your consideration on Bill C-303.

The Institute of Marriage and Family Canada is a research think tank designed to draw together the social science on issues such as the raising of our children. We believe that you, the decision-makers, should consider all the factors involved when making these decisions. To this end, I'm pleased to present a cross-section of some of our work for your consideration.

Much of this research comes out of documents before you, and it's also available in full on our website at imfcanada.org.

One of the crucial pieces of the child care debate is to best determine what it is that parents actually want. There's much rhetoric and a variety of polls of various levels of quality that have been done on this very question. Of primary importance is for officials to not presume what parents of young children want, but to actually ask them. To this end, one year ago we published the results of a survey that delved directly into this question. Copies of this poll have been included in the package that you have before you at this time.

Although there's a lot of information in the survey, please allow me to highlight just a couple of the key pieces that are pertinent to your debate today.

Of the parents who have young children and who may be actually accessing child care, 78% indicated they would prefer if a parent were able to stay home to raise their children. This did not change significantly when we factored in the gender of the parents, the geographic region they came from, or their respective level of education.

Of course, we know that having one parent stay at home is not always feasible, whether this is due to single-parent families, fiscal constraints, or other logistical considerations. To this end, we then asked the respondents what their preference for child care would be. The results that we found were quite dramatic. A majority of 53% indicated they would prefer a relative to care for their child; the following 20% preferred a family child care setting; and trailing were non-profit child care, at less than 17%, and for-profit child care, at a low of 7%.

Again, these results did not change across different break-outs based upon geography, income or education levels, marital status, urban versus rural settings, or gender. One notable exception is that the Quebec respondents had almost an even split between a relative or family child care for their child. If we adjust the results for those parents who have children under six years of age, the results remain almost identical.

It's clear to me from these empirical findings that the intent of Bill C-303 is not in keeping with what Canadian parents desire. We believe that each family has its own unique challenges, and a one-size-fits-all program is not in Canadian parents' best interest.

We believe that the government needs to honour the choices of parents, who are best positioned to nurture and raise their children. Parents who need child care for their children should be allowed to do so in the manner they deem appropriate for their circumstances.

Clause 4 of Bill C-303 notes that the Province of Quebec may exempt itself from the provisions of this bill. My assumption is that this is because Quebec has a form of provincial child care already in place. From listening to previous witnesses, I think the Quebec model has been held up as how a national child care program should indeed be structured.

With all due respect to those who are involved with the Quebec child care program, the latest evaluations clearly show some substantial failings. According to Pierre Lefebvre, professor of economics at the Université du Québec à Montréal, the Quebec policy “favours higher income families, is unfair to families who choose to care for their children themselves or do not use non-parental child care, and is not well suited to parents working part time or non-standard hours.”

Professor Lefebvre continues: “Children from low-income or less-educated families may be triply disadvantaged by being less likely to receive stimulating care at home, less likely to be enrolled in educationally oriented care outside the home and more likely to be receiving low-quality service when they are in child care.”

The economics of the system have left parents worse off. “By its very nature, the $7-a-day child care model favours a specific type of child care setting that is subsidized and state-regulated. It benefits certain parents to the detriment of others,” writes Norma Kozhaya of the Montreal Economic Institute in an October 2006 briefing note on Quebec’s child care system.

One of the main problems with child care in Quebec, using data from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development, is that children, while in a safe environment, are not learning. According to an Institute for Research on Public Policy report: “The majority of child care settings attended by the children in the QLSCD had a global rating of minimal quality, which means that they provided safety and security for the children but offered a minimal educational component.”

It's also important to note that the CBC reports there's a waiting list of 35,000 children in Quebec, and that Quebec immigration actually tells new immigrants to that province that there is a one- to two-year waiting list for child care.

In light of this comparison and the other research that's readily available to you today, the IMFC is opposed to a national system of early learning and child care as proposed in Bill C-303. It allots money preferentially to one type of care: centre-based or institutional care. It therefore does not help parents make choices. It offers one solution alone, at great cost, to the detriment of those who do not make that choice. We believe this is discriminatory.

We would point this committee to research from the U.S.-based NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, the largest, most expensive child care study ever undertaken--it has been running for close to 25 years now--which has been examining the long-term effects of all types of child care on children.

The researchers have found that high-quality non-maternal care, including that by fathers and grandparents, improves cognitive outcomes, things like a child's vocabulary and memory, but that too much time in centre-based care, even high-quality centre-based care, was related to poor behaviours, including hitting others and arguing a lot. In their latest research this spring, the researchers have shown that this negative behaviour is measurable up to and including the sixth grade.

In short, while there are benefits to high-quality care, those benefits are not limited to centre-based care, such as the care proposed under Bill C-303. Rather, the benefits are seen in many different types of care in more informal settings. The drawbacks, like increased aggression in children, are seen in poor-quality centre-based care. Currently, care in Quebec is described as mediocre. High-quality care under a state-run, state-financed system is difficult to create.

There are other issues that should be addressed here; unfortunately, time does not permit me to address those. However, in conclusion, I'll say I believe you cannot measure this issue through strictly economic calculations. These are our children, our future, and they must be measured accordingly. We must hold ourselves to a higher standard.

While we recognize there is a need for high-quality child care within society, this one-size-fits-all approach does not meet the needs of many families and cannot be supported. This bill does not address the needs of the majority of Canadians who do not wish to use institutionalized child care.

I thank the committee for your attention. I would be pleased to address any questions you have in the discussion following.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, sir.

We're now going to move over, via teleconference, to Ms. Smith.

Ms. Smith, where are you joining us from today?

[Beverley Smith, As an Individual]

I'm in London.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you for being here.

You have seven minutes. I'll try to give you a two-minute warning and then one as you move through your presentation.

[Beverley Smith]

Thank you for inviting me. I'm pleased to be here.

I'm particularly impressed with the teleconference, which is, I think, a way to get a lot more public and women's involvement in issues.

When you are discussing Bill C-303, I have to say that it's pretty well impossible to be against a bill to benefit children. I have, for 30 years now, argued for you to be looking at issues like this, to spend more money on children's care, to value the role of the person taking care of children, and to notice that these are pivotal years for the education of children, so that's all good.

I'm not here to criticize the bill for what it says, so much as to criticize it for what it doesn't say. It is actually excluding some important considerations legally and ethically. I've been a long-time promoter of women's rights, to value our paid labour and our unpaid labour, and to value children's rights. This bill is working for educational stimulation, health and safety, the right of women to participate fully in society in ways that they wish. All of those are good goals, but this bill is a problem because it doesn't go far enough.

This bill doesn't give all children benefit. It looks at only one lifestyle and gives it the benefits. That's a concern. So this bill, although good, needs a sister bill in order to be fair. It needs a partner to value what it left out. It did leave out children who are not in the child care settings being provided for--the third-party, non-family-based care. That is actually the majority of children. It omitted children in parental care or grandparent care; the care of a day home, a trusted neighbour, a sitter; home-schooled children; in the care of parents who telecommute, parents who take the child to paid work, parents who do paid work evenings only and weekends off-shifting. These people are also parents and they're also offering care of children, and they vote.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Canada signed at the United Nations, said a child has the right to be raised in the presence of the parents, wherever possible, and if the parents choose to assign a caregiver, trusting the best judgment of the parents, the caregiver can be anyone who shares their values, their language, their culture, and the things they want to endorse. The parents are the ones trusted to know the best interests of the child.

Children outside the centres are valuable too. This bill has forgotten them. In section 15 of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we're told that we have to give equal benefit under the law to all children. So Bill C-303's problem is that it's not universal. It says it gives universal access, but that's a legalistic trick and couldn't hold up under a court. Access to agreeing with a policy isn't really access to equal benefit under the law.

Bill C-303 suggests a majority of women now earn, so they need this bill. In fact, it says its purpose is to help women earn. That's a problem, actually, because if we're going to value care of children, we shouldn't as a main focus be valuing those who are not caring for children. Many women in fact do earn, but they do so from home or part-time and aren't using the third-party-care style.

So this is not in any way a universal benefit program.

You have been told there are wait lists of children who need this service. That may be true in some ways, but the wait lists are a little bit inflated, because children's names appear on several lists and there are names on those lists of children not even born. So it's a little deceptive, and we're not sure the wait-list people are not just waiting for the funding.

Proponents say there's a patchwork of services and we need to standardize. You know, in a democracy a patchwork is actually a good thing because it's a quilt, it's diversity. What we have to be really wary of is something that requires a standardized one-size-fits-all treatment. That's what got us in trouble before.

Proponents of Bill C-303 say universal child care is like medicare. Universal child care is not like medicare. We all risk emergency need of medical assistance if we have sudden illness or injury. Because of that equal risk we have, we pay a universal payment for health care. Child care centres are not locations of emergency risk, and employees are key, but they're not experts the way that medical doctors are experts.

Proponents of Bill C-303 say it's like universal education. We should start it from birth. The problem is that they don't have a monopoly on education. A child is born learning; it's born ready to learn. So although a child may learn in your child care centre, it's not learning any differently from or any better than in some very high-quality homes. Therefore, we should value education wherever it's happening.

Schooling and medical care are actually moving away from the one-size-fits-all formula for funding institutions. They're actually moving towards funding the home. We're trying to get more people cared for medically in the home. It saves money.

We're trying to get diversity for home schooling and other kinds of education to match the needs of the children. So to move to a one-size-fits-all standard is out of touch with what's currently found to be best.

Also, Bill C-303 will cost $10,000 per child per year. Just for the preschoolers in the country, it would $20 billion. The day care federations are saying that their goal is to provide a day care space for every child in the country. We simply cannot afford that.

Let's look at what we can afford that is still of universal benefit. The only way we could make that affordable is to raise taxes, as they do in Sweden, to a 60% tax rate.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You have one minute left.

[Beverley Smith]

That's fine.

What I'm suggesting regarding Bill C-303 is that for those children who do actually prefer third party child care, it's fine. But unless you also value the child care happening in all those other locations, this bill should not fly and will not be popular with voters. It's certainly not fair to children the way it stands.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Ms. Smith.

We're now going to move to Ms. Ward, via video conference. You have seven minutes.

Are you there?

Okay, we're going to move along to Ms. Coupal. We'll come back to Ms. Ward when we iron this out.

You have seven minutes, please.

[Yvonne Coupal, Coordinator, Citizens in Favour of Equal Government Childcare Subsidies for All Children]

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for the opportunity to testify today.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for the opportunity to testify today.

Let's start at the end. We respectfully recommend the following.

Firstly, all federal MPs elected to ridings in Quebec have the moral obligation to vote against Bill C-303, or at the very least, to abstain from all future votes. Bill C-303 discriminates against the children of Canada by showing prejudice and favouring only one type of child care: that of third-party child care.

Secondly, clause 4 must be deleted from Bill C-303 because it discriminates against nine provinces and the territories in Canada. It demonstrates clear prejudice by favouring one province, Quebec, which is exempted from the constraints provided by the standards, the conditions and the accountability provisions. In addition, the clause will create an intentional fiscal imbalance should it remain in the bill.

Thirdly, all reference to universality in Bill C-303 must be removed because universality is not only unrealistic, it is also fiscally unwise.

Even now we are having difficulty paying for our legislation. If bill C-303 is passed, we are doomed to pay for it with our collective credit card, also dooming the same children whom we say we want to help to bear a huge financial burden. How ironic! Ultimately, the children will be paying the bill. The pernicious effects of universality are creeping into our elementary schools in Quebec. The quality of life, the air quality and the lack of space are deplorable, because, in large part, of the universality of before-school and after-school child care programs that destroy our school infrastructure and undermine the healthy educational climate. There are only so many fish that you cram into a can, even when they are sardines. The can has a lid, but there is no lid on school infrastructure in Quebec because no-one has the courage to put a lid on Utopia. What will it take to do it one day? At the moment, ladies and gentlemen, mum's the word.

Let's start at the end. We respectfully recommend the following.

First, all federal MPs elected to ridings in Quebec have the moral obligation to vote against Bill C-303, or at the very least abstain from all future votes. Bill C-303 discriminates against the children of Canada by showing prejudice and favouring only one type of child care above all others: that of third party child care.

Delete clause 4 from Bill C-303 because it discriminates against nine provinces and three territories in Canada. It demonstrates clear prejudice by favouring one province, Quebec, over and above all others, as Quebec is exempted from the restrictive standards and conditions that will be applied.

In addition, it will create—intentionally, imagine—a new fiscal imbalance, should this remain within the bill.

I always ask myself the same questions in circumstances like these. How many of us went to daycare when we were little? The average age of your committee is around 46. I really doubt that many of you have any experience of daycare at all. If you did, how many went full time, five days a week?

And how many of us who did not attend day care as children—because we might have benefited from other care settings, like our own homes, or with a relative, grandmas, and neighbours—would have preferred to go to day care? Each of us knows the answer deep down inside.

Above all we must not deny this feeling because we have already come out in favour of C-303. There is still enough time to look once more at the whole question of child care inclusively rather than to start from a biased position that favours third-party care.

As adults, we're obliged to take a serious look at the past 10 years of Quebec's day care experiment before short-sightedly imposing a utopian dream, a dream for which the supposed benefits remain unproven to this day.

Quebec MPs are well aware of parents' concerns with third-party child care. Those who use the services know the current shortcomings: a rigid schedule, Monday to Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., no part-time service, no right to pay extra for better services for their children, even out of their own pockets. All in the name of universality.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We're not getting translation.

Okay, go ahead, please.

[Yvonne Coupal]

Am I too fast for the lady?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

No, it's just a technical glitch.

[Yvonne Coupal]

Where would you like me to start from, since my translation was picked?

The list goes on.

On the other hand, there are many responsible parents who would prefer to receive money, now being paid out by government directly to the day cares, in order to provide their own child's care themselves--what a concept.

Quebec parents are fed up, and they showed it when they realized that they were being penalized for looking after their own children. They showed it last March 26, in the provincial election.

So look, let's put all the children of Canada first. They're really the upcoming Team Canada of our future.

Let's put all the children of Canada first. They are the Team Canada of our future.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Merci beaucoup.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Ms. Coupal.

We're now going to move to Ms. Landriault.

[Sara Landriault, President, National Family Childcare Association]

I'm actually not French. I can't really even say my own last name. I did marry one, so it's 50-50 in our house.

Listening to Dave, Yvonne and Bev, I'm only going to give you a quick introduction of who I am and I'll skip my speech, because it's all the same thing. We all want choice.

My name is Sara Landriault. I am a stay-at-home mom with three girls. I was yesterday, I am today, I will be tomorrow. Whether I go back down to $10,000 a year, $50,000 a year, or $150,000 a year, I will fight my butt off to do that because it's what I believe. But it's not what my neighbours believe and it's not what everybody else believes. They all have their different choices. I want their choices respected as much as mine.

I've started a group, and it's the fault of you guys--no offence. It's a grassroots organization called National Family Childcare Association. We came about because of bills like this, and when the Liberals were introducing the national day care last year, or the year before. We came about because it made us mad. We're sitting on the couches eating bonbons, watching soap operas--whatever you guys believe we're doing. It really ticked us off.... Sorry, I try not to swear.

So I did something. I've e-mailed every one of you. I'm sorry I don't speak French. I have tried, and my translator has been busy lately. I have e-mailed each one of you my thoughts. Sometimes I'm angry, sometimes I'm not. Today we're in a good mood because I'm not angry; I'm terrified at speaking in front of you.

It's not that we don't want the bill. The NFCA, I myself, everybody involved in it--we want a bill like this. We simply want a bill that's going to help all of us, because there are families out there--and you will be introduced to them--that are making $20,000 and $30,000 a year with three or four kids, or more, or less, that are at home. Okay, they're eating their Kraft Dinner, they're driving beat-up old cars, they need new tires, they need this, they need that. They're not putting their kids in hockey, not because they don't want to but because they can't. They simply believe in caring for their own children, and that's what they want to do. There should be no discrimination toward them, and no discrimination to women who want to go out and work, get paid for it, and move up the corporate ladder, or stay at McDonald's. I mean, there should be no difference between any of us. We should all be respected as parents.

I don't even extend the “as women” bit, because lots of dads are staying at home. There are men's groups popping up all over the place--dads at home, stay-at-home dads. It's not all about being a mom. It's about being a parent. Whether you're straight, gay, black, white, it doesn't matter. We're parents. We should be respected for what we believe is right with our children. Sorry, I didn't mean to yell that at you.

You can read the rest in the briefs I've put in, but honestly, they have said everything I could have said on the statistics. I am no scholar. I'm not going to give you the right statistics; they're actually better off with that. I get what I get off the Internet at home. My computer's in my bedroom with a bunch of files called “Childcare”.

For anything else you want, please feel free to ask me any questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Landriault.

We're now going to move to Ms. Ward. Could you make sure the mute button is not on? I'm sure once you start talking the video will pick you up.

Ms. Ward.

[Helen Ward, President, Kids First Parent Association of Canada]

Hello, can you hear me?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We're making progress. We can hear and see you.

Welcome. You have seven minutes.

[Helen Ward]

Thank you.

Kids First Parent Association of Canada began in 1987 with two objectives: support for the optimal care of children, and support and recognition for parental child care. Unlike the day care lobby, we are 100% volunteer-run and are neither founded nor funded by government, unions, or corporations.

Personally, I am a low-income, single mother in what others call poverty. The day care lobby has a paternalistic habit of speaking on behalf of women like me without our consent, which feminists call appropriation of voice. I understand that you have also been speaking about women like me, so I'm sure you'll be glad to listen to one of us.

Though most of my work is unpaid, I have been doing paid work since four months after giving birth. I have both used and provided high-quality child care and early learning in parent-regulated situations without state involvement.

Kids First opposes this bill. Our reasons include the following.

This bill promotes the false premise that child care and early learning are defined as government-regulated situations only. This discriminatory, exclusive definition is not found in any peer-reviewed research. Child care is the care of a child. Early learning is the learning a child does, and a child care space is a space a child is in.

All children need child care 24/7, 365. This is a universal essential need. We are fully in favour of child care and early learning, and of course research shows that it's good for children. They'd die without it. However, no peer-reviewed research shows long hours in group care improve children's long-term outcomes, and no peer-reviewed research supports the hypothesis that day care expenditures produce returns of $2 or $7 or $16 per dollar spent. This bill is another crass attempt by the day care lobby to hijack all funding for child care and early learning by hijacking these definitions.

If you are truly concerned that mothers are poor or that families have no choice, empower us. Fund families directly with the money now spent on day care spaces and bureaucracies. That's over $20,000 a year for one infant. This bill is based on a campaign of disinformation intended to manufacture consent for unmarketable, hidden agendas. You've heard of activist judges. We are concerned about activist statisticians.

One untruth is that 70% of mothers are working. All mothers are working mothers. Dr. Donna Lero has worked for Statistics Canada and says that this 70% is for paid, full-time work, including mothers of infants and toddlers. Actually, only about 6%, and not 70%, of mothers of children under three spend 30 hours or more per week on a job.

A hidden fact is that only 14.9% of children six months to five years are in day care centres. You can find this fact buried on page 97 of the 99-page Statistics Canada 2006 report. They did not publicize this fact, and instead their press release says 54% are in child care, giving the false impression that day care is the norm.

Another fact is that wait lists are bogus. They are reservation lists at best. Names are multiple-listed, put on far in advance of possible use, and not removed. Using these lists as an indicator of demand is an indicator of the abysmal level of day care scholarship. In fact, hard data from the You Bet I Care! report from B.C. and Toronto show that vacancies are common in day care centres and indicate an excess of supply over demand.

Another false premise of this bill is that regulation by government assures high quality in child care and early learning. It doesn't. Canadian studies such as You Bet I Care! and Quality Counts! find that the majority of licensed day care is of minimal to mediocre quality in Canada and Quebec. Even in Sweden, the ministry of education reports that poor quality is pervasive in day care there.

One key reason for poor quality is poor allowable staff-child ratios. A U.S. study found that with ratios of one staff to three or four children ages 14 to 24 months, fully 45% did not receive adequate caregiving, and fully 50% did not receive adequate developmental activities. But ratios in Quebec and Ontario are one to five for under 18 months. At 18 months in Quebec, it jumps to one staff for eight. These are the same bad ratios found in Australia, where for-profit day care chains dominate.

Dr. Jay Belsky, internationally renowned developmental scientist, called this “a licence to neglect”.

Dr. Edward Zigler, Yale child development guru, has said licensed day care provides “psychological thalidomide”.

Another false premise of this bill is that it is about children's “well-being”, as the preamble mentions. The strange mix of bedfellows that make up the day care lobby is dominated by the corporate right. This includes the OECD and Fraser Mustard's backers, the World Bank and the Royal Bank of Canada. These entities are not known promoters of children's well-being or justice for women. What is the left, the NDP, doing in bed with the World Bank? With socialists like this, who needs capitalists?

Dr. Mustard's organization's chairman, Charles Coffey, is also the vice-president of the Royal Bank of Canada. In a speech to the World Bank, he states that early child development is “a business imperative”. He looks to investment opportunities, including “data collection”, and indeed he praises Dr. Clyde Hertzman of UBC, who is now busy harvesting children's private data from “preconception to early adulthood”.

The OECD ideologues reject what they call “the ideology of the family” and say that we are in transition to a new order of greater state intervention in the family and something called “the new child” and “the public child”. Try to sell that to the voters.

The corporate right's hidden agenda is partly for day care to “subsidize low wage employment ('welfare in work')” . We call their misogynistic so-called post-familialist policies with jobs for moms in the forced labour force.

We urge you to dump this bill and revive the Liberal government's 1999 policy, which embraced equality and stated that policies should “neither encourage nor penalize caregiving choices”.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I was just about to give you another 15 minutes, but no, you're out of time.

Thank you very much, Ms. Ward.

We're now going to move along to our questions by our members of Parliament. We're going to start with the opposition Liberals. The first round will be seven minutes, as I said, followed by a couple of rounds of five minutes.

Ms. Dhalla, you have seven minutes.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Thank you very much.

It's a good thing our chair has to be neutral, so he can't partake in any questioning.

First of all, I wanted to thank all of you for coming here. I think out of today's presentations it's extremely unfortunate that we are actually having a debate and listening to testimony that is pitting stay-at-home moms against working mothers against parents that have chosen, both mothers and fathers, to put their children in non-profit day cares or profit day cares or put them in whatever day care space is available to them within their particular community.

I heard a number of comments from all witnesses in regard to inflated wait lists. I believe that in Ottawa there is one centralized waiting list, and taking a look at that waiting list, there are over 10,000 children on that particular waiting list. In other communities there are not opportunities for individuals or parents to have centralized waiting lists.

When you take a look at Ottawa alone, I believe it's certainly not a list that has been inflated, because when you talk to parents across this country you realize they have to wait years and years to ensure their children actually get access into day care spaces that are high quality, that are universal, and that are affordable.

I wanted to touch upon something that I believe Ms. Ward has stated in the past. Can you tell us who your organization is funded by?

[Helen Ward]

There's no paid staff at all in Kids First. We are funded by donations from anybody who gives us money. Right now, actually, we have no money; we're in the hole. If you would be so kind as to donate, we'd be very happy to receive your donations. We are not funded by any political party or anything else.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

I'm sure the Conservatives, who are in government right now, may think of an opportunity to do that funding on their own account with their new funding mechanisms for day care.

But I want to find something out. You made a quote--and correct me if I'm wrong--where you said, “To me, it's part of their accountability concern. We're funding lobby groups”--“we” being Canadians, I guess, or Conservatives or the government--“with public dollars, millions and millions of dollars.”

While your own group is not government funded, you had attended a meeting that was organized by the Prime Minister's Office in regard to consultation for day care. Is that correct?

[Helen Ward]

That was in November 2005. He wasn't the Prime Minister, and my flight was paid for by donations to Kids First from various individuals. And we received zero--that's zero--money from any Conservatives that I know of and any corporations and any government entities.