Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the concerns that were expressed by the member and I need an explanation on a couple of things or perhaps she could correct the information she just put forward.
The government has honoured the one year arrangement that the previous Liberal government put in place for child care. We honoured that up front and we gave one year's notice to be certain that no one would be unaware of it.
As to the other statement that she made, I happen to know it is completely incorrect. Having spoken to the MLAs in my area, there has been no clawback in B.C. funding. In terms of people in low income families, the B.C. government will not claw back again now. Therefore, it will not make any difference to low income Canadian families who are living in British Columbia.
Regardless of what the letter may say, the woman who wrote the letter has every right to express her opinion but if she is basing it on misinformation that could have been given to her by this particular member of Parliament, the member has an obligation to make certain that the lady who wrote to her understands that there was no clawback in B.C. and that the new program that will begin in March will be the perfect opportunity to create 25,000 new child care spaces every year for the next five years, for a total of 125,000 spaces.
I would urge the member opposite to encourage the people in her riding to spend the kind of time and energy in cooperating with businesses and corporations to create these new child care spaces, rather than doing the kinds of things that they are doing now, which is not helping children, parents or existing child care centres.