Pay close attention, this is important. We put public child care facilities in place. This kind of debate took place in Quebec at the start, but I can assure you that now people are very pleased to have child care for what was initially five dollars a day and now is seven dollars. People are very pleased, because it works. We were also very pleased in Quebec to be able to act as an inspiration for the rest of Canada. But during those five years of operating with our original idea, we bore all the costs ourselves. We also assumed the tax deductions and federal tax credits to which the parents would normally have been entitled. Because of the low cost, the five dollars and then seven dollars a day, we could not draw as much benefit from tax credits and federal tax exemptions, and we have never been compensated for that.
The child care system works. My party and I support it and are very pleased with it. We have focussed on the bureaucratic expenses which have risen considerably. Had their growth been limited only to inflation in these sectors—and not been 10, even 30 times greater in certain cases—we could have saved $5 billion annually. We could have applied these savings to increasing the number of public child care spaces.
What we are particularly opposed to is the laissez faire attitude, particularly where bureaucratic expenses are concerned. I have listed some of these already. Opinion polls, up 334% in five years, which makes no sense. Office furnishings, 215%, another aberration. These are luxuries to which we object strongly.