Thank you.
We seem to understand this lesson very well when it comes to international development programs. As the former minister for CIDA, I know this is a major focus at that department, but we seem not to learn the same lesson for our own policies, which is one of the reasons I wanted to highlight this in the reports that have been written by the standing committee. For the first time in our country--it was only about a year or two, maybe three years maximum--we have a Standing Committee on the Status of Women in Canada. Up until then, we didn't even have a standing committee to study women's issues in this country in terms of looking at things from that perspective. I just want to put that on the record.
I want to focus on another aspect of these planks we're looking at, and that is about childhood education and child care. I heard this morning, and we've heard consistently, that a great many people mention child care as critical and early education as fundamentally important to addressing the issue of poverty. Yet we have a program that was eliminated and we have $1,200, so that doesn't do it.
I want to go first to Dr. de Oliveira, because I just want to clarify what you were telling us this morning. You mentioned that cash transfers don't work well, and that transfer-to-province money to create spaces works better. I presume you mean that the $1,200 type of program is not the way to go, but that transferring dollars and establishing a national child care program in partnership with the provinces is the better way to go because it creates accessibility. Am I right?