Mr. Speaker, I welcome and congratulate the hon. member on her maiden speech in this chamber. I think she will find a lot of friends in this place with some of the points she made today in her speech.
Earlier today I spoke and shared with the House some piece of research that found that about 25% of Canadian children enter adult life with significant emotional, behavioural, academic or social problems. This should be a beckon call to all Canadians and parliamentarians to ensure that our policies and priorities do in fact put kids first. I want to congratulate her on her contribution to the debate on child care.
We know that one solution does not fit all. We know that families need flexibility, options and choices. Giving money to people and allowing them to use it as they wish is certainly one approach. However we have the problem on the other side where today's child care system within Canada, which the OECD, other than for the Quebec situation, has characterized as glorified babysitting. We do have to move beyond glorified babysitting to good quality child care but it is tremendously expensive. Some have suggested that the cost would be as much as $15 billion per year for a national child care program.
I wonder if the member could comment on what she would see in terms of a transitional approach to providing child care support to Canadian families in need which is realistic of the financial realities.