Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think that clients who are getting daycare support through Income Support should pay at the beginning of the month like any other client and that there should be a reporting mechanism back to the care provider on the number of days that that child attended. If there is a continual history of decline or attendance is dropping off, then I think that matter can be reviewed.
But I think that it’s more than just stabilizing the income of the day-home or the daycare. It is stabilizing the ability of people on Income Support to get daycare, because the fact of the matter is that if somebody is trying to run an operation like this, they’re not going to be inclined to accept children whose attendance there is being subsidized by the government if they’re not treated like any other client, i.e., as Mr. Hawkins said, paying in advance so that they can count on that space.
So I’m interested in making sure that those people who do want to go to work and who do want reliable
and affordable child care can…. Not just reliable but regulated. A lot of people go to work, and they try to find just anybody to babysit their kids so they can go to work, and sometimes that’s not the best environment for the child. I’m about making sure that those children, whose parents are being assisted through Income Support, have just as good an opportunity as any other child to access quality daycare. It’s about stabilizing the service for them as much as it is stabilizing it for the daycare provider. So I will be supporting this motion.