Mr. Speaker, I do not mind a good healthy debate in the House, but I sure do not like misrepresentation. Clearly, at no point did I stand in the House and suggest that all parents should send their kids to day care. I said the opposite. I said parents need to have a choice and if there are no spaces, there is no choice. If we do not invest money to create the spaces, there is no choice. The government's obligation today is in fact to create the choice.
The $250 million that the member is talking about, and he failed to actually give the full description of the program, is money for businesses to provide a tax credit for the creation of spaces. He only has to look at the Mike Harris government which tried this and did not create a single child care space as a result of that.
He knows as well that this amount, even if it did go directly into child care spaces, is still a very small percentage of what is required to meet the needs of working families and working women in society today to ensure that all children are able to get the best care possible and go on to make great contributions to this country.