Mr. Speaker, I am presenting another petition on child care. I have had thousands of them from across the country. Child care is often not accessible or affordable for Canadian families and is often of uncertain quality for young children. Child care creates jobs, makes Canada more competitive, helps achieve women's equality and builds local economies. It is a recognized human right.
The petitioners are calling upon the House of Commons to legislate the right to universal access to child care and to provide multiyear funding to provincial and territorial governments to build a national system of affordable, high-quality, public, not-for-profit early childhood education and care accessible to all children.
The federal government must establish funding criteria and reporting mechanisms that would ensure accountability for how the provinces and territories use federal funding to ensure quality accessibility, universality and accountability, and that acknowledge Quebec's right to develop social programs with adequate compensation from the federal government.