Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my NDP colleague for the very perceptive question. I would point out that she states in her preamble that Quebec is a leader in terms of day care. Quebec is still fighting to obtain equalization transfers, money which we are entitled to receive.
With the current budget, we will lose $1 billion in equalization payments, an amount we probably could have used to expand our day care system.
I find it unfortunate that women in the rest of Canada do not have a day care system such as ours. Women and women's groups are calling for one. But there exists an ideology that prefers to give money to women—small amounts of money—to keep them at home so that they do not pay into a pension fund and do not have some freedom.
If they were truly listening to citizens and to women, they would give them day care centres and the budget would include measures to enable women to have some freedom of choice and to train day care professionals such as those in Quebec. It would be another means of keeping the economy going.