Mr. Speaker, first, I have never called the minister names. I do not think there is anything I said in my statement today that was a misstatement of facts. I want to clarify that. In terms of the provinces wanting to work with the federal government, I would say some provinces do and some do not.
I want to make a couple of points.
First, many people believe that government should help them in the provision of child care services and early learning opportunities. That is a provincial jurisdiction. It has been a provincial jurisdiction. Many provinces, including Quebec and Ontario, have made significant strides in those areas. The provincial governments are more than able and capable of dealing with this issue. I do not think that there is either wisdom, or accountability or competence in Ottawa that cannot be found in provincial capitals. I do not agree with the notion that somehow the federal government is necessary to coordinate or to make this happen.
In terms of the money, obviously provincial governments of all political stripes, which are struggling to balance their budgets and fund their programs, are interested when the federal government comes along offering money. I have said many times before that we have a fiscal imbalance in Canada and that there are officials from two levels of government, namely municipal and provincial governments, who go to bed every night and worry about how they will pay for things. It is only one level of government that goes to bed at night and tries to figure out how it will spend all the money.
That is my point in this case. If the federal government is offering money to the provinces to help them with the costs of child care, I am sure that the provinces will accept that money. I do not accept the notion that the federal government in any way can bring things to the debate that the provinces could not find themselves.
Second, we are not just talking about tax cuts. We also are talking about tax credits. If the federal government has made a commitment to investing federal dollars in child care, rather than flow those dollars through large institutions, where they will inevitably absorb a large amount of that money, we think those dollars should be flowed through parents so parents can make decisions about how they want to spend those dollars. Parents in different provinces, based on the options available to them, can determine what is right for them.