Mr. Speaker, I want to approach this from a different perspective than my colleagues did, but I think I am going to arrive at the same conclusion.
I am just going to quote a couple of things I heard the member say. I just listened to the member say that our children deserve a better start in life and every child deserves half a day of early development. I am not sure I disagree with the statements themselves, but merely with who provides that development.
The member contends that it is professional quality and well paid staff who can provide the safe environment and the love that children need to succeed, but empirically, study after study demonstrates that the best outcomes for our children are actually from home schooling, from parents who teach their own children, whether those studies are about the United States or Sweden or other countries in Europe or Asia. The outcomes for children who are home schooled are actually higher for parents who do not have teaching certificates, so any parents can teach their children better than a school system can.
I do not understand how an early childhood education system is somehow going to replace parents. No one provides a better learning environment for their children than parents do. What children need is a full day of their parents at home, not a half day of development with someone else.
I have figured out the problem. Statist governments, whether they are in Ottawa or Quebec City, see autonomous families as competition to the state. That is wrong.
Here is my question. Why will this government not give children their true best start and cut its bloated spending so parents can work fewer hours with less stress to spend more time at home with their children, teaching them, loving them and providing them with the right atmosphere? That is going to give them a better educational outcome. It is going to give them a better financial outcome. It will give them a better relational outcome than anything the government could possibly provide.