Mr. Speaker, as the minister knows, we have discussed this matter on a couple of occasions. I sit on the committee that has been investigating any sort of national day care program.
Last week the authors of the OECD study on child care made a presentation to our committee, two were via satellite video conference from Paris and several from Canada were in the room. There was discussion around the test scores of children who had been in what they called high quality regulated care versus low quality care. They never mentioned kids who stayed at home with their parents. When I asked how children who were raised at home by a stay at home parent fared in their testing, the response from one of the authors in Paris was that in fact children who had been raised at home did very well in testing.
I reject the very notion that some monolithic government operated day care system will inevitably lead to better results in terms of early learning than the alternative, which is to support parents who want to stay home with their children. Not only should it be financial support, but as we do with early year centres in Ontario, we should support those parents with tools and resources to help them teach their children.
I find that the minister has jumped from the fact that early years learning is needed to the notion that the inevitable result is some large government run monopoly for child care, which is the way Ontario seems to be going. I am wondering how the minister squares that with the fact that even the OECD says kids raised at home by their parents do very well in testing.