Mr. Speaker, I would like to withdraw that comment. Perhaps we could have some more dignity and respect in this place.
As I have indicated, women have been increasing their presence in the workforce over the past few decades. According to Statistics Canada, in 2020, 47.1% of the Canadian workforce are women. That is something we should be very proud of. We know that the reason that women are in the workforce is because there are people who are able to support them.
I was very fortunate because in my own world I had parents and I had a husband, who, unfortunately, was unable to work because of a disability, who were able to care for my children. I also put them in a day care for a number of years. With five children, I have used a mix of different sources, also due to the income I had. Our family's base income was $45,000, combined, at the time that I had five children. If anyone wants to talk about children and parents struggling, $45,000, five children, it is tough.
That is why I am talking about it today. Not only is it tough, it is tough when women are trying to get in the workplace and there is no spot. That is exactly why we are bringing this, talking about it at third reading and talking about it at report stage. The problem here is that a labour strategy needs to be connected to this, and there is not a labour strategy.
The Liberal government has been here since 2015, and in 2017, when I was doing this, we talked about the wages and recognized that at $22 an hour, people were leaving this type of work because they were not able to pay the bills. At $22 an hour, there was not enough income for them to pay the bills.
People were leaving, and we know there is a retention issue. That is one of the greatest challenges. Until we have a labour force that can fill these spots, Canadian parents are being sold a bill of goods. It is important that we have sustainable child care. It is important that we have quality child care. It is important that we have choices in child care, whether it is Milestones child care, which is private, or the not-for-profits in our community, we need it all.
We need to have an entire selection, a cornucopia of different strategies so that we can deal with this. There need to be the options for parents who may be living in Toronto or my town of Sparta.
I have one constituent who wrote to me and indicated that it is a 35-minute drive for her to get child care. Getting to child care is very difficult, especially if one is looking at having almost two full hours of their day, driving there and back, and there and back again for pickup. These are the types of things that we need to consider. Accessibility for parents is one of the most important things.
Another constituent wrote to me, and I am just going to read parts of it, due to privacy, I do not want people to know her name. She was given notice to resign if she failed to return to work by the end of the next week. She had been trying to explain her situation to the manager, who was very reluctant. The issue for her was that the closest day care in her neighbourhood, the only day care in that area, had enough space for eight more children, but due to shortages of day care staff, they could not take any more children.
These are the problems. When we are talking about this, I have heard that Conservatives do not support child care. We support child care, but we want child care to be more universal. We understand that the cost of child care is exorbitant. When I said I was making $45,000 a year, $1,200 a month was going to child care. I understand when money is tight. I understand what it is like to feed bagels to my kids because I did not have a lot of money. I really want members to stop banging on us for being Conservatives.
I had another constituent talk about day care, saying there is a serious supply issue for the current demand for licensed child care access for families. Their son is nearly two years old and they have still not been offered a space in a day care facility. They put his name on the list in September 2021, for infant programs. It was clear that there will never be a spot.
Another said that her son has been on the wait list since March 2022, and he is 50th on the list. That is another email. I talked about the person who was 35 minutes away from day care. I have another person saying that there are no, spelling no with about 25 “o”s, spots in licensed centres or homes.
This is the problem here. It is great to have this program. I believe in child care. I always have believed in child care. However, there needs to be something that works for parents.
This is where I am going to put my mom hat on. For years, I always said “It is up to the family.” We just went through COVID and the fact is that, like every mom in this place, every daughter and every sister, we know a lot fell on the shoulders of women. That is why I will fight to ensure that we have a child care program that works for families and especially works for women.