Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member of Parliament on his election. He replaces a fine member of Parliament. Contrary to what he might have said in the House, I congratulate him for having been elected at such a young age. He has a long and distinguished career ahead of him, preferably not in federal politics but in some area of public life.
I had it a little more difficult than him. I was not fortunate at his age to be elected as a member of Parliament. I did not have the benefit of such a good paying job to pay my student loans. I hope things go better for the member.
As for the question of day care in this province, I think we are taking a very huge step in assisting with day care and assisting young families.
The member makes a point that families should choose and that parents should choose. However, he also misleads when he says that this would create a federal bureaucracy. That is not the intent.
We have great confidence in the ability of the provinces, the ability of the communities, and the systems that are in place. We do not believe we need a cookie cutter approach. We believe that the same system could be applicable everywhere in the country. This is why we want to work with the local jurisdictions and see how well it goes.
If we placed an equivalent amount of money, $5 billion, and said we are going to invest that in day care, but rather than doing it by transfers to the provinces and letting them do the arrangements with the communities for day care we did it through the tax system, it would be good for the new member opposite. I do not know if he has any children or if he has started a family. He is in a good income bracket. He would receive a great benefit from that.
A young family in my riding with two children, where both parents are forced to work because of their income levels, the tax system does not work for them. They too have concerns about their children and how they are cared for. There has to be some additional assistance.
The federal government decided, working with the provinces and having campaigned on it and having heard from Canadians from coast to coast to coast that it was a necessity, to make an initial investment of $5 billion and to do it in partnership. We have already done a lot on the tax side. We have heard that the tax-free personal incomes will be going up in 2009 to $10,000.
That is the threshold before which you pay no income tax. We have also reduced the credits for families, which will mean that a family of four with a family income of $60,000 will have an income tax reduction in Canada of approximately 35%.
These are very important measures which allow these families to make decisions about the way they want to invest. Do they want to invest in early childhood education, in caring for young children so that one of the two parents can remain at work? Those possibilities exist. However, what we want is another system. One that will be a quality system. We know young people who graduate with a very good education to work in day care centres or nursery schools. They are university graduates and they earn pitiful salaries because the communities do not have the resources to pay them.
Now, with these transfers, we will work with the provinces, which in turn can work with the communities. Then we will have a quality system. A system in which we will have made a healthy investment for early childhood, since it will provide us with great Canadian citizens who will continue the development of the country. Then, one day, they will come to replace us in this House, and like generations before us, we will think that all of them are too young.