Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Adding this amendment is really important because we want to make sure that there is access for all parents and for all children. Really, parents are the best people to decide who cares for their children. Part of what's in this amendment is that it says, “that meet or exceed standards set by provincial governments or Indigenous governing bodies”. It's really important that this is in here because it is saying this would be child care that is meeting these standards.
Therefore, if the provincial standards are acceptable, then it should be acceptable for that child to be in whatever format that might look like. Right now, the way this bill is—really, it's coming after the agreements have been made with the provinces—it touts being accessible and inclusive when in fact it's leaving out a number of children who really need access to this.
During the time when we were having witnesses and doing questioning, I did quote a couple of child care providers from my riding, but there are many others. I've had many parents reach out to me as they have seen this program roll out and have seen how it's leaving people behind. I have visited child care facilities in my riding as well.
I think this is one of the most important pieces we can add to this legislation, so that there is access for everyone and so that everyone is covered. The government is prioritizing government and not-for-profit facilities. However, they will not be able to be the sole organizations in order to expand the number of child care spaces that are needed. We have numbers that are in the tens of thousands of children who need placement, and actually, we need over 40,000 workers as well.
There are a lot of private facilities that have opened. We heard testimony about how they've taken on personal debt. They do this for the love of what they do. It's their passion. They are not similar to a lot of the organizations that other members might quote, which are the huge, corporate, national organizations. A lot of these organizations are private, but they're in our communities. They're serving maybe between 10 to 50 children. They're not a huge size, but they're serving our communities all over this country. It's really important that we capture all of them because right now there are children being left behind.
I think this is one of the most important pieces we can add to this legislation to make it stronger and to make it better. There's overwhelming support for having more accessibility for families who really need access to this program.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.