Mr. Speaker, first, I appreciate the comments by my hon. colleague, both on housing and child care.
Let me just first touch on housing, since we both agree that it is a very important area of investment. I remind the member that while we share this concern, it was the NDP that moved the agenda forward by adding $1.6 billion to the budget for housing. There was zero in the 2005 federal budget for housing until the NDP proposed the additional money.
The Minister of Housing may be going around the country suggesting that he has a plan and that he would have done this anyway. He may have a plan, but he did not have the money. It is important for us to acknowledge that. Because Canadians spoke so strongly about this need, we made a commitment to include that demand in our negotiations with the Liberal Party. I might add, that investment alone is estimated to create approximately 26,000 person years of employment, so again evidence of the bang for the buck.
On the question of child care, which a very important issue, when the OECD looked at Canada and said that about our child care system, it looked at the country as a whole. The fact that we do not have a national child care program has led the OECD to comment that we have more like a babysitting service than a good early childhood program.
The OECD recognizes that provinces like Manitoba and Quebec have very excellent models that ought to be replicated across this country. However, what the OECD has said and what other economists in Canada have said, like David Dodge, is that the investment in this area is so important for dealing with productivity and for ensuring our economy grows. We cannot ignore this area or we lose in the long run. It is like cutting off our nose to spite our face. If we do not invest in these areas, we are only hurting ourselves in human terms and also in economic terms.
Let me close by saying that it was Charles Coffey from the Royal Bank of Canada who said that a child's brain development in the first six years of life sets the foundation for lifelong learning, behaviour and health. High quality early childhood education produces long term positive outcomes and cost savings that include improved school performance, reduced special education places, lower school dropout rates and increased lifelong earning potential. We have so much to gain by investing in the area of child care.