Mr. Speaker, the fact that not all children are placed in child care spaces is not because the parents do not want to have those spaces that are provided for on a quality basis. It is because those spaces do not exist.
When we talk about child care, we are not talking, as the Conservatives like to suggest, about only full time child care in a certain building according to a certain pattern. We are talking about a child care service that meets the needs of all families, whether it is part time child care, 24 hour child care, shift work child care, rural child care, after school child care, infant child care, child care for children with disabilities, the whole range. That is what a truly responsible child care system provides.
In fact, that is the kind of system that exists in Manitoba, but it cannot keep doing that on its own without some federal support and partnership. That is what this debate is all about. In Manitoba, despite the involvement by the provincial government for many years and despite the fact that it is one of the best systems in the country, there are 15,000 children on the waiting list.
What we need is a government that is prepared to partner with a government like Manitoba, which is also in partnership with the vast array of people concerned about child care, the whole movement, the whole coalition around ensuring the best possible care for children. We need to invest in child care and ensure that those one million children who do not have access to proper, regulated, quality child care do so.
Let me add one more point. As a mother with two children who has gone through the system, I first tried the route because I could not get a child care space of an unregulated place in someone's home. I was not happy with that situation because I did not know what qualifications that person had and what was happening to my child during the day. I worked like crazy to ensure that I found a way to get my children into organized, quality child care offered on a non profit basis, and my kids are wonderful people. They will make a great contribution to society, just like all the other working women out there who want the very same thing for their children.