Mr. Speaker, I commend the member for her vigorous defence of children in Canada who are in day care. I think we can all agree and come to a consensus that children are among the most vulnerable of individuals in our society.
However, the member may not be aware of the fact that only five days ago, on April 5, Statistics Canada issued a report highlighting a number of surprising statistics. First, only 16.2% of Canadian children between the ages of six months to five years are enrolled in day care centres and second, Canadian parents, given the choice, prefer other forms of child care by a margin of 4.5 to 1.
The Liberal one size fits all solution does not work for most Canadians. There is an even more astounding study that was completed by the University of Guelph in 2000 that showed that nationally 54% of day care centres report having vacancies with 30% reporting vacancies in excess of 10%. Given these statistics, I have a question for the member. Why is her party intent on preserving vacant day care spaces when the government has a plan which allows for parental choice, pays $1,200 per year, per child under six, and creates 125,000 day care spaces that will actually be full?