Mr. Speaker, in 1995 when the then Liberal government cut off a huge social transfer and in fact eliminated the entire program of the transfer in block funding format, what occurred is a large number of provinces across the country cut the welfare rates for a lot of single mothers.
A single mother cannot work because there is not enough child care. She has to stay home to take care of her kids. Yet, when the welfare rate is so low and we have laws that allow deadbeat dads not to pay support, what we see in Canada is a lot of single mothers trapped in a cycle of poverty.
In Toronto there have been surveys and polls done on single mothers who live on welfare. The polls have tracked these mothers for five years. They are in fact stuck in a cycle of poverty. What is interesting is one-third of them have university degrees. Many of them cannot get back to work because they do not have child care support. Some of them are depressed because they are stuck. They want to work but they need someone to take care of their kids, which is why we absolutely have to have a national child care program, so that mothers who want to go to work are able to do so.
If they choose to stay home to take care of their kids, then there really should be a living wage so that the welfare rates would be high enough so they would not have to face the awful choice of having to feed their kids or pay the rent.