Alberta Finance Minister Iris Evans, seen presenting the provincial budget on April 7, told a Toronto audience that proper parenting does not include two working parents. (Jimmy Jeong/Canadian Press)

Alberta's Liberal leader is demanding an apology from Finance Minister Iris Evans, who suggested that in order to raise children "properly" one parent should stay at home while the other goes to work.

"If she really said these things, she must apologize. If she doesn't apologize, the premier must fire her," David Swann said in a statement Wednesday. "These are truly outrageous claims. I have never been as stunned by the sheer arrogance and ignorance of the Tories as I am today.

"In a sense, Iris Evans did us all a favour by revealing her contempt for the sacrifices made by hard-working Alberta families."

At the end of a speech on Alberta's economy to the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto, Evans spoke about the importance of teaching kids about finances and how those lessons can be empowering.

'When you're raising children, you don't both go off to work and leave them for somebody else to raise.'— Iris Evans, Alberta finance minister

She also said good parenting means sacrificing some income to stay at home while kids are young, as her own children have done.

"They've understood perfectly well that when you're raising children, you don't both go off to work and leave them for somebody else to raise," Evans said. "This is not a statement against daycare. It's a statement about their belief in the importance of raising children properly."

She also said a lack of education is ruining the upbringing of some children and leading to mental illness and crime.

"The huge failure of Canadians is not to educate the children properly, and then why should we be surprised when they have mental illnesses or commit dreadful crimes?" she said. "We've really got to focus on that properly, and it should be financial literacy as well as anything else."

Swann said Evans's comments just prove that Alberta is now led by a "group of small-minded social conservatives who don't understand the problems of ordinary Albertans."

"She even dismisses the genuine suffering of people with mental illnesses, blaming it on bad parenting and our schools," Swann said.

With files from The Canadian Press