Mr. Speaker, through the child care spaces initiative announced in budget 2007, the Government of Canada has been transferring an additional $250 million per year to provinces and territories to support their priorities for child care spaces, so they can continue to build their child care systems to meet the needs of their own citizens.
In the last five years, the federal government has transferred over $1.25 billion to provincial and territorial governments specifically for the creation of child care spaces. This is in addition to the $850 million being transferred to the provinces and territories for early childhood development and early learning and child care.
The Government of Canada is working to enhance the vitality of official language minority communities while at the same time respecting that provincial and territorial governments have primary responsibility for the design and delivery of early childhood development, early learning and child care policies and programs.
As the Government of Canada, we play an enabling role, transferring significant funding to supplement and support each province and territory’s own investments. We do not direct or oversee the design and provision of early childhood services. The provinces and territories are accountable to their own citizens, not to the Government of Canada, for their policy decisions, activities and expenditures in this area.
Since 2007, federal officials have been monitoring provincial and territorial child care space announcements and have informally tabulated that there are plans to create over 102,000 new child care spaces so far. Given the informal nature of the tabulation, it does not include a breakdown of spaces by official language minority communities.