Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that whenever Canadians are asked about their priorities in child care and who they would like to have raise their children, they say they would prefer to be able to do it themselves, with their spouse.
The type of institutional child care that was proposed by the previous government was actually the fifth choice of most parents. While some provinces did indeed sign on to a program to provide institutional care, most parents would prefer that one or the other of them look after their children. They work hard trying to juggle one family member or another to look after the children. Sometimes they rely on older kids to help with the young ones. Sometimes they rely on grandparents or a maiden aunt or someone else. That is who they prefer to have doing it.
Parents struggle for their children. They invest in their children. I believe that what we are doing in supporting parents with their own choice is a better option than institutional care for young children.
Furthermore, my wife is a counsellor in the school system and is reading a book right now that I find very interesting. It is written by a psychologist and a medical doctor who talk about how important the early years are for children in bonding with their parents. This is a time when young children should be bonding with their own parents so that when the parents impose their will on them, they respect it and obey their parents. If this bonding does not take place, frankly, the children are at a much higher risk of rebelling and having what psychologists call “counter-will”, which causes all kinds of problems later on with delinquency.