Mr. Speaker, the budget actually does not help a single mother on welfare. For example, because she earns less than $20,000, this means that she does not qualify for the new child tax benefit. Because she is not working, since there is no child care for her, she does not qualify for the program that the hon. member talked about, the working tax credit. She loses out on both of these new programs. The parents of the poorest children are not able to benefit from this new budget.
Furthermore, on the investment that various governments have made on child care, and the hon. member talked about child care funding, in Ontario, for example, close to $1 billion has been transferred to Ontario and guess what? The provincial government has not invested this money, close to $1 billion from 2005, 2006 and 2007 in child care. Most of this money has gone somewhere, but we do not know where. The funding has not gone to the child care providers. It has not gone to create affordable child care. There is really no accountability on the funding that is transferred to provinces on child care. What good is it to transfer funding to provinces without any strings attached, with no standards whatsoever?
Many of the provinces, whether it is B.C. or Ontario, do not invest this money in providing affordable child care. Thousands of parents across the country are desperately waiting for child care and who knows what happened to the funding? Who knows what the Ontario government has done with that money?