Mr. Speaker, when we the comments of the experts who looked at the old Liberal plan, most of them agreed a number of groups were missed in that plan. This is the plan that was never delivered. This is the plan that was announced just before an election. The Liberals tried to make it look as if they were going to finally delivery a universal child care program, after 13 years.
The former government could not give a universal child care program to rural Canada. It did not have the infrastructure. It did not have the people who would be able to put in place a plan that would affect small communities. I have towns, villages and hamlets in my constituency in which a couple of hundred people live. Every expert recognized that most of rural Canada would not benefit from the Liberal-NDP plan.
Most experts also recognized that the Liberal plan was a nine to five program. It would not have benefited the shift worker. It would not have benefited the single mother who was working odd shifts and needed a day care, or a grandmother, or an aunt, or someone to look after that child in the evenings while she was at work.
I referenced the Vanier Institute report. It made it very clear that in one-third of the families, a parent looked after the children, one-third of families used an outside relative or someone in a home and one-third used day care. I did not say those day care centres would close down. I simply said that some of those day cares may not qualify under that former government's program.