Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for providing me with the opportunity to clarify the comments I have just made.
What is important for the members of the Bloc Quebecois in this issue is to ensure that all families, and all women, have an equal opportunity to raise their children. I mean all families, all women, all men, all couples. Whether families are poor or not, whether there are one or two parents in the home, what we want is for no one to be at a disadvantage for deciding to stay home, or to work outside the home.
No mother ought to be penalized because she has made one choice or the other. This is a fundamental freedom of choice we acknowledge for women, or for men who might be in the same situation.
We feel that rearing children must come first. We also feel that mothers, while providing this child-rearing, must also have access to the fundamental freedom to realize their potential by working outside the home or within the home.
We would not like to see a government policy which favoured one choice over the other. What we want is to see the fundamental policies designed and implemented in such a way as to ensure that a person is not penalized for having made a free choice. We would not like to see government policies advocating practices or programs that would encourage or discourage one or the other choice. We would like to see the individual's most basic rights respected.