Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House today. We look across the floor at a government that is corrupt and ruining our country's finances. We have seen this corruption exemplified by the Liberal ad scam, the $2 billion gun registry and the $1 billion boondoggle of HRDC. However, in the latest effort of the government in its NDP budget, we find a more egregious waste of tax dollars.
I suggest that perhaps the most outrageous example of hidden costs contained in the budget are found in its seemingly altruistic promise to bring in a government day care bureaucracy. Liberals are telling the Canadian people that they can bring in a government day care bureaucracy, applicable to every child, at the cost of $1 billion a year. In reality, we know the cost of this program is approximately 10 times that amount.
The government day care bureaucracy will impose a $10 billion a year burden on taxpayers and take away choices from women and families. I will demonstrate that today irrefutably with the evidence I have on my desk. However, better than that, I will bring hope to Canadians by proposing an alternative that gives choice to women and families. The Conservative Party and its leader believe in a woman's right to choose how to raise her children. That right we are prepared to defend on the floor of the House of Commons.
Let us start by demonstrating that the Liberals' plan is 10 times more costly than they are prepared to allow Canadian people to understand. Recall that the Liberals said that the gun registry would cost only $2 million. It is now 1,000 times over budget. We on this side of the House gave warnings, which were unheeded. Thus, today we have a $2 billion monstrosity that not only harasses duck hunters and farmers and takes choices away from them, but imposes greater burdens on taxpayers.
Likewise, we have before us the government day care bureaucracy. I will look at the evidence. The government tells us that the program will cost only $5 billion over five years, in other words, approximately $1 billion a year. However, let us look at the words of minister responsible for social development. I do not know if he realized that he was being recorded when he made this promise at a community event. He said:
And the nice thing about it all $5 billion over five years does not create a system. What it does is set things in motion.
He went on to say that the $5 billion would only be enough to create bits and pieces and fragments of a system. If it is going to cost $5 billion over five years to create bits and pieces and fragments, how much is it going to cost to make universal the government day care bureaucracy?
It is not just a rhetorical question. I have with me a list of organizations, most of them government funded, that support the day care bureaucracy proposed by the minister and the Liberal government. I have visited their research studies on the cost of the program. Remember that all these organizations are supportive of a government day care bureaucracy. Let me give an example of what they have said.
I have here a document from the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada. It indicates that the full cost of a government day care bureaucracy, the kind that the Liberals are proposing, is 1% of GDP. That does not sound like a lot, but that 1% is deceptively large. We are talking about $10 billion per year, not $1 billion as the government claim. This means there is a $9 billion black hole in the government's day care bureaucracy promise.
Where will the government get that $9 billion? It cannot merely be pulled out of thin air. It will have to be taken from the pockets of parents through higher taxes. A $9 billion obligation, whether it is borne partly by the provinces and partly by the federal government, there is only one source of revenue from which that $10 billion can come and that is out of the pockets of taxpayers. If the government claims otherwise, it has to demonstrate which other programs it is prepared to cut, health care perhaps, or whether it is willing to run a budgetary deficit.
However for the government to claim that it can bring in a universal day care bureaucracy for only $5 billion over five years is deceptive, as has been admitted by the minister responsible who says that $5 billion over five years “does not create a system”, and who then goes on to say that it will merely create bits and pieces.
The organization I quoted gave us this document entitled, “From patchwork to framework: A child care strategy for Canada”, which is the same strategy that the Liberal government is proposing. Actually the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada is very accurate because if we take the cost of the Quebec day care bureaucracy and calculate it over the size of the entire Canadian population, the cost would be in the neighbourhood of $10 billion.
We have evidence that the Liberal Party is trying to hide $9 billion worth of costs associated with its latest election promise. That is the Liberal hidden agenda on child care.
Now that we have addressed the enormous cost with which taxpayers will be faced by this Liberal day care bureaucracy, I would like to address an aspect of this issue that is even more troubling yet.
I have before me a quote that illustrates the very unfortunate attitude of the social development minister, the misogynistic attitude, the paternalistic attitude, the attitude that borders on sexism. I want to read this to the House. I was here when these words were stated on the floor of the House of Commons on February 15. He said:
A recent study, as was cited by the Vanier Institute of the Family, has found that most moms and dads with pre-school children would prefer that one parent stay home and take primary responsibility for raising the children. Again, that is not surprising. As parents we all feel guilty about the time we are not spending with our kids. However, if we asked the same group of people or any group of people if they would like to lose weight, 90% would say yes. If we asked them if they would like ice cream once a week and chocolate twice a day, about the same percentage would say the same. The question, as in all of these matters, is not what we would like to do, but what we will do, and what we do.
Let us review. The fact that the Vanier Institute demonstrated that the vast majority of parents prefer an at-home child care option over the day care bureaucracy could merely be explained away by feelings such as guilt and the desire of a parent to stay in the home with the child is akin to nothing more than a frivolous desire for ice cream or chocolate. That is the attitude that drives the Liberal commitment to this day care bureaucracy.
This is an outright contempt for a woman's right to choose how to raise her own children. The government would take away that choice by imposing higher taxes on families that make the sacrifice to keep a parent in the home or pursue another child care option.
We in this party pursue a more hopeful and choice driven option. We would put child care dollars right into the pockets of parents to let them decide how to raise their own children. We would work our way toward income splitting that takes away inequities that are imposed on families with a stay at home parent.
This is all in the interest of choice and economizing taxpayer dollars and I am proud to stand for these values.