Mr. Speaker, our government takes its commitment to help Canadian families very seriously. We place choice in child care where it belongs: first with parents and second with the provinces and territories.
As stated in the Speech from the Throne, families now have a real choice in child care. With the universal child care benefit, we give approximately $2.4 billion per year in monthly payments to parents for every child under the age of six. We also provide the provinces and territories new funding of $250 million per year that will help create tens of thousands of quality child care spaces across this country. We provide nearly $5.6 billion to support early learning and child care through transfers, direct spending and tax measures. Translated, this is $1.1 billion in cash transfers to the provinces and territories, $695 million for the child care expense deduction, and $1.5 billion in tax support for families with children through the new child tax credit.
We are proud to support Canadian families with children. The Liberals did not get it done; this government did get it done.