Status of Women committee  There has been discussion about it. I think, from our point of view, it was in the discussion stage. They just published the report from the consultation, which didn't say very much, actually.

Status of Women committee  I would love to talk to you.

Status of Women committee  Those are really good questions. Let me start by saying that we who work in child care policy don't see it as a free-standing policy. It needs to be supported by better parental leave policy and better policies for families overall. That's because child care is an important piec

Status of Women committee  Karen, let me answer this in several ways. First, we who work on child care policy agree with the idea that families need to have options, call it choice, options. All of the evidence that we have reviewed, and all of the research shows that the best way to do that is by developi

Status of Women committee  There isn't any reason that a small community or collection of small communities cannot have a small child care facility. You see this all around Europe. You see it at the top of Norway on the tundra. You can also incorporate regulated home child care into the system as it is all

Status of Women committee  Child care, which is what the subsidy pays, costs much more than the amount of the child benefit. Nobody has studied this, but the subsidy waiting list has been at about 18,000 generally for the last five to six years. From a practical point of view, I don't think anybody has se

Status of Women committee  That's okay.

Status of Women committee  I urge you to do all you can to ensure that Canadian women don't have to wait. Thank you.

Status of Women committee  Before I conclude with a couple of concrete recommendations, I want to take a minute to comment personally. I've been a policy researcher on early childhood education and child care even before I immigrated to Canada in 1971, and I'm very familiar with child care issues not only

Status of Women committee  Thank you very much committee members and Madam Chair. I very much appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today. In a way, maybe you don't need to hear from me, because I think Professor Fortin has made a number of the points I wanted to make. I think I'll be making them

Finance committee  I think the easiest way to think about that is to think about health care. The federal government played a role, successively, in ultimately bringing in the Canada Health Act. The federal government plays a major role, although with setting the broad brush strokes, wielding the

Finance committee  Thank you very much for having me here today. I'm going to keep this as brief as I can. You already have my brief. I think the main point I want to make is that the government has already made some commitments to a national policy framework for early childhood education and car

Finance committee  Let me put it another way. One of the main arguments against having publicly funded child care across the country is that we can't afford it. What I would like to point out is that money is being spent without evaluation or assessment of whether it actually does what it's intend

Finance committee  The Premier of Ontario has actually said this publicly. I think it was in her throne speech. She mentioned the poverty reduction strategy that they just released and said that we need a national child care program and that Ontario would welcome it. I haven't asked them, but I thi

Finance committee  Thank you. I'm the executive director of the Childcare Resource and Research Unit. I'm talking about the other end of the age spectrum compared to what Dr. Simpson was talking about, but there are actually a lot of policy similarities. I'm really pleased that you asked me here