Madam Speaker, I listened very carefully to what my colleague had to say when he was talking about child care choices in New Brunswick. I think he said that 68% of parents have some form of child care. I think that later he increased that to 80%, but I may have missed it. He said that these are the choices of the people of New Brunswick. He gave some figures, saying that said 20% were doing one thing, 30% were doing another and 40% were doing something else.
I suggest to him that those are not actually the choices of the people of New Brunswick but simply what the people of New Brunswick are doing now. Some of them have the ability to choose to have sophisticated quality child care outside their home, and some choose to have sophisticated quality child care in the home. That is because they actually have the money, but other people cannot do that.
There are people who would choose those options if they had the money. Instead, they ask a relative or someone else to look after the children while they are working. By the way, I understand it. I have been through some of these things myself. They do not pick that. They need the choice. They need to be able to make the choice. They need to be able to say yes, they can have quality child care for their children, or they can decide not to.
The member talks about choice and this potential strike in Quebec. There are strikes and the risk of strikes in our elementary and high school systems all the time. Apart from a very small percentage of people, it does not mean that people opt to take their children out of the schools. It does not mean that at all.
There is a percentage who have the choice of home schooling, and I agree with it. They espouse and love home schooling. These are families who agree to educate their own children, still in the present day, but the vast majority of people support the public school systems across this country.
I suggest to the member that he ask the people he quoted who do not have quality child care about this. If he were to ask them if they would like quality child care associated with the elementary school down the road, for example, for their children every day when both parents go to work, they would all say yes.