Mr. Chair, I will be sharing my time with the member for Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock.
I would like to thank the Minister of Social Development and the Minister of State for Families and Caregivers and their officials for being here tonight at such a late hour to answer our questions about issues that are of importance to all Canadians and very much make up the social fabric of our nation. I will speak specifically from my own viewpoint and that of my peer group. That is what I can do legitimately on this topic.
I would like to express my views on the policy. The minister of state referred to his area as being something he would like to see us treat as non-partisan. I truly believe that the issue of child care and choice in child care will have such a significant impact on not only my gender, but on my age group. I really want to share, frankly, with the Minister of Social Development where my peer group is coming from and what I am hearing from them, which is that this is not the sixties.
My peer group is professional, young, educated, urban women who have access to the workforce. We are competing very successfully in medical schools, in dentistry schools, in law schools and in all professional schools. We also are competing very successfully in the workplace. I would like to say that we compete successfully in the political arena as well.
However, we also want to have access and we want all of our choices treated equally, whether we choose, if we have children, to stay home or to work part time or to work full time and to have access to day care. We want all those choices. My peer group want the government to facilitate our choices, not restrict them.
One of the things I have noticed in the report on plans and priorities, and the Minister of Social Development referred to it, is that the Government of Canada plans to spend $100 million for the development of a new accountability package that is supposed to support improved research and evidence based indicators. Could the Minister of Social Development share with the House if any of that money will go to either a gender based analysis of the child care program or an income based analysis, so my peer group and my gender can be assured that all women will be assisted by this program in an equitable fashion?
In my academic background, I have a lot of feminist theory training and gender based analysis training. My concern is this program discriminates against young women in the workplace who would like to either stay home part time or full time with their children. It discriminates against women in low income jobs who more often than not do shift work. It also discriminates against women who live in remote and rural areas.
Has the Minister of Social Development done a gender based analysis and could he share those results with me tonight?