Mr. Speaker, an important thing that I did in my copy of the budget document, which I think all Liberals should do to sort of help speak truth to this budget, is I drew a line just before the next election, because any of the promises that fall in the fourth, fifth, sixth, or 11th year out from this budget are not worth the paper they are written on. The Liberals do this constantly. They put up some large figure and say they will invest x billions of dollars in something, and it is all back-loaded. Of the money that the Liberals just talked about in their budget, and which my friend referred to, 85% falls after the next election, as if somehow the Liberals could promise money five, six, or seven years out.
My friend talked about child care. This is an important thing. During the last campaign, the Liberals were very critical of the NDP plan because they said we rolled it out too slowly, even though our plan is ten times more generous than the first year the Liberals get to spend money on child care. I have the budget document here. If I look through the budget and look at spending on supporting families through early learning and child care, that is their money. In 2016-17, the Liberal budget says zero, and for 2017-18, the Liberal budget says zero.
If this is so important—and it is; we know affordable child care for families is critical not just for families, but also for the health of our economy—budgets are about choices. The Liberal Minister of Finance and the Liberal government made the choice to spend zero dollars allowing Canadians to access affordable, safe child care for their families.
Why pretend at this? Why back-load this? Why put the hope out there to all those Canadians, to all those single working moms, and I was raised by one, that somehow there is something coming when there is not? Maybe there will be in two years. We will see in next year's budget the number three years from now is actually real, but with the vast majority of child care money spent after the next election, one could only take away the conclusion that this is all about politics and not about families. Why spend zero dollars this year and zero dollars next year when it comes to helping families access child care? It is a simple, straightforward question.