Mr. Speaker, once again I take umbrage with the member for Parkdale—High Park in her criticism of the budget, particularly when she focuses on the area of early childhood learning and child care and argues that our government is not doing anything in this area.
I have two broad points to make to suggest that is not the case. The first is that this is an area of provincial jurisdiction. Our government has indicated that in certain areas of provincial jurisdiction we will continue to play a leadership role: things like health care through the Canada Health Act, where the Minister of Health recently announced some very good initiatives with respect to patient wait time guarantees; things like national infrastructure projects in which the government will be investing a record $33 billion over the coming years; and things like post-secondary education and training in which the government is making record investments. In certain areas we will be playing a role but early childhood learning and child care is not one of those areas.
Much in the same way that the Government of Canada, as with most members of Parliament here, would never choose to tell a province how to run its public school system or tell a province that we will set up a federal department of education to run the provincial public school system, similarly, early childhood learning and child care is really an extension of the public school system, an extension of an area of provincial responsibility. To that end, our government has respected provincial jurisdiction in this area because what works in downtown Montreal, in Westmount or in Outremont may not work in the rural wilds of Saskatchewan. What may work in downtown Toronto may not work in rural Ontario. What may work in High Park may not work out in Fergus, Ontario.
We have chosen to allow the provinces to deliver the service. Many provinces are already doing so. Quebec has a system that has been in place for years. Ontario has the early years centres.
We have increased the transfers to the province so that they can better deliver the service. We are increasing it by $39 billion over the next seven years and this will assist parents and children throughout the country.