Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to ask a question or two of the member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar. I listened carefully to what she said. I have not been in the House for all of the debate on this issue, but I did hear the comments made by the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle and I have read the article he referred to.
There is one thing that distresses me a great deal when all is said and done. When I try to make sense out of the position of the Conservative Party, I am very distressed at the extent to which there is a grotesque misrepresentation of what is proposed in the way of a national child care program.
To say, as is asserted in this article that was referred to as a real expression of what the Conservative Party supports, that this proposal is one size fits all and accessible only to a few families, that it is a plan that only supports one choice and is a nine to five institutional day care, is just dead wrong. It is purely inaccurate.
I would like to ask the member to comment. How does it serve the need for a comprehensive child care system that has flexibility, that respects the different needs, rural and urban and in terms of shift workers and so on, to misrepresent what the potential is of the programs being put forward?
Second, and very briefly, why is it that Conservative members when they speak to the child care issue almost never acknowledge the extremely valuable early childhood enrichment experiences that come to children and families on top of in home care, on top of direct parental care? I do not want to say “never”, but I have never heard in all their pronouncements the acknowledgement of the definite benefits to our children of being involved in early childhood--