On that point I agree. Canada's lousy at supporting child care. We have some great people in child care--Sue Wolstenhone, and the Pat Hogans and the Margo Kirks around here who've championed this--but Canada as a nation is woeful. We were 25th out of 25 OECD nations in a UN study released before Christmas, looking at the benchmarks of early learning and child care. We don't do a good job in supporting people who are trying to do that.
We have to have a national child care system, but I don't think Canadians know how good other countries--the Nordic countries, France, Germany, and places like that-- are at it. Here in Nova Scotia we have two institutions that you would think would be real leaders in early learning and child care--Dalhousie and IWK--and we have a corporate-style child care that has moved into those areas. They're signing up members.
I don't blame the people who are signing up, but because we don't have a national system, people will move in, and they'll scoop up the best clients, one might say, and everybody else will be left with nothing in the way of child care. We have to have a universal system.
In terms of targeting support, financial support should be targeted to those who need it, in my view, through the tax system but, more importantly, through refundable tax credits.
In terms of systems, if you're going to have a robust system, it has to be universally accessible. That takes away stigma as well, to some extent, which some people are concerned about.