Mr. Speaker, the member opposite articulates a good vision. The intentions of the government are good, but as with so many things, we are not seeing the action associated with them.
Increasing the child benefit does not help parents unless more child care spaces are created in which to spend that money. This is our big disappointment. No action has been taken to tackle the out-of-control child care costs. No action has been taken to create new child care spaces. The budgets of this year and last year had zero money allocated to create new child care spaces.
The 2017 budget of last month also fell far short of the international standard of 1% of GDP spent on child care. Oxfam Canada and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives are just two of the groups that called the alarm on this.
As Morna Ballantyne from the Child Care—