Mr. Speaker, I think to some extent the member would put words in the former finance minister's mouth, although to the extent that we may disagree on aspects of this.
On the question of people staying home or not, the tax system should be neutral with respect to the choices people make about child care. I do not think it should penalize people who make one kind of child care choice over another. Some parents may decide that a certain kind of child care arrangement is better for their family, whether that is a person at home, be it mom or dad; whether that is grandparents; whether that is institutional child care; or whether that is some kind of child care sharing arrangement with neighbours or friends.
What I see in my community is actually the increasing flexibility and variability of child care relationships. We increasingly see people working from home, and working different hours. We are not in that sort of narrow nine-to-five model for many people. Increasingly there is flexibility there. There is a lot of change and variability in child care.
From a state perspective, we should not go to families and say that we think this is what we want to them do with respect to child care. We should leave the decisions to the people who we think are the most important child care experts, mom and dad.