Thank you for your question.
As I said when I answered a question from Ms. Ferreri, my association does not represent unlicensed child care services. I am speaking for the indigenous community organizations known as indigenous friendship centres. We provide early childhood and family services.
What we offer goes beyond child care. We offer support services for indigenous families and children. As we know, a majority of indigenous families do not use the child care offered by the government or use private child care. In any event, that is how things are in Quebec. I believe it is the same in the rest of Canada.
These families often find it difficult to access that type of child care, because of racism, discrimination and prejudice, so community organizations like the friendship centres that can offer parents supports like drop-in child care and drop-in respite services offer avenues for the Canadian government to consider. The government needs to make sure that the urban indigenous population has access to high quality child care that is outside the usual structured child care framework.