Mr. Speaker, child care and early childhood learning is a fundamental need for Canadians, a fundamental social program which Liberals believe in and which a large majority of Canadians believe in.
I would remind the hon. member that no one is forced to use these facilities. I would remind the hon. member that we are not objecting to the transfer of cash to families. I would remind the hon. member that his government promised to create day care spaces and yet zero have been created. It has failed in that commitment.
He did not answer my fundamental point about social engineering and family choice, which is, why does the member favour one kind of activity for young Canadians, like hockey, and gives nothing at all for other kinds of activities, like music, dance and things of that nature? That is where he deprives Canadians of choice and that is where he puts that choice inappropriately into the hands of the government.
Yes, of course, I believe that government should go after abuses. As I have said many times, and perhaps more important, as seven out of seven witnesses before the finance committee said, what we should go after is not double dipping--that is a figment of the finance minister's imagination--it is something called debt dumping. The finance minister does not seem to know the difference between those two expressions. All of the experts, to a person, told us in the finance committee that the abuse is to be found in debt dumping, not in double dipping, and yet the minister goes after double dipping.