44th Parl. 1st Sess.
January 30, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, as we try to figure out where the different political parties are on the principles of the legislation, hopefully it will pass sooner as opposed to later. I think a lot will depend on the Conservative Party's positioning on the legislation, but it will go to committee.
The member might want to take up her question with the minister responsible for the legislation. I am sure that at the committee stage she will be able to get a more detailed answer than I would be able to provide her at this time.
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Madam Speaker, every parent should have access to quality, affordable child care when they need it.
The Liberals promised national child care almost 30 years ago, and for decades families have been struggling to afford child care, struggling to find child care and sometimes paying more than their rent or mortgage to ensure their kids are taken care of. I am so glad to see both the current funding commitments and this legislation for the future.
With the federal financial commitments, B.C. has been investing in reducing costs, creating more spaces and recruiting more early childhood educators. That is my home province. The member is from Manitoba, and Manitoba is the only province that has not seen an average reduction in child care fees.
I am curious if the member agrees that we need to see stronger accountability measures so that we actually guarantee that families are going to see a reduction in costs.
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Madam Speaker, the short answer is that I am absolutely confident there will be a reduction in fees in the province of Manitoba. I could not say right offhand, but I would be very surprised if that was not the case. With regard to the Liberal Party and its history, unfortunately the first time we had agreements that were signed off for child care was back in Paul Martin—
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The first time you promised it was 1993. I was nine.
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- Jan/30/23 5:19:25 p.m.
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Order. I want to remind the hon. member for Victoria that she had an opportunity to ask a question. If she has another one, she needs to wait for an opportunity to ask it.
The hon. parliamentary secretary can finish off before I go to the next question.
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Madam Speaker, not only do we have agreements once again with all the provinces, territories and indigenous leaders, but now today we are debating principles and putting them into legislation to ensure we are going to have them for future generations.
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Madam Speaker, I hear calls around me of revisionist history. This is the history; I remember it like it was yesterday.
On November 28, 2005, we had signed child care agreements from every province with the federal government, stickhandled, which is a good use of the term, by Ken Dryden, who was the minister at the time and a former hockey great. That was part of a package of things that had been accomplished, including a plan for Kyoto that would have gotten us very near our Kyoto targets. We could have avoided Fiona if November 28, 2005, had not happened. There was also the Kelowna Accord. This was all agreed to, and tragically my friend Jack Layton, whom I loved, decided it was better to bring down Paul Martin's minority government and turn the country over to Stephen Harper, and we lost child care.
Martha Friendly, child care advocate, will back up every word I just said. We had been working together on it.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to extend my answer a bit beyond that to the current leader of the Conservative Party. I made reference to the fact that he boasted about the cancellation of child care programs, and I suspect those are some of the child care programs he was referring to when boasting. That is why we should all be concerned with regard to what I would suggest is a hidden agenda within the Conservative Party, which does not support the type of child care that I believe, and we in the Liberal caucus believe, Canadians want to see.
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Madam Speaker, when I met with residents, I met with women and heard positive feedback. They love the child care idea. We saw that, and there are stats out there. When women get into a second career and go back to the workforce—
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- Jan/30/23 5:21:54 p.m.
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I want to ask the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands and I believe the hon. member for Victoria or the hon. member for London—Fanshawe, as there are some side conversations happening, to take them outside so that the hon. member for Brampton South can be heard.
The hon. member for Brampton South.
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Madam Speaker, more women are getting back into the workforce and starting their second career. I am wondering if the hon. member can expand on how this bill supports economic growth and women who are going back to a second career. Can the member explain that?
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Madam Speaker, as I indicated earlier, within the Liberal caucus there is a great sense of accomplishment on this particular file. We understand that there is a lot more to do, but I can tell the member that when we reach out to our constituents and talk to some of the child care workers and some of the parents, there is a high sense of excitement. That is why I believe this is sound legislation that should be supported by all parties of the House.
If we believe in the importance of accessibility, affordability, inclusivity and high-quality child care, then this is good legislation that will enshrine the principles of those things into law. We can then continue to work with our constituents to ensure that more jobs are created. Also, there is going to be more opportunity and more free time for people to get involved in the workforce, in volunteer work and in many other activities.
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Madam Speaker, our colleague across the way made reference to a situation where one parent was working during the day and one at night, and somehow their plan made for a better quality of life. Does this $10-a-day day care apply when somebody is in the home, because people who work during the day have to sleep during the night and vice versa when we have a family with parents on double shifts?
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Madam Speaker, I am trying to be a little sympathetic to constituents of mine who have children and are not able to afford child care. For the first time, they can now look at maybe not having as much work, where one parent has to work in the evening and the other in the daytime and they are not necessarily able to make the connection they would like with their family unit.
I am suggesting that at the end of the day, this particular program, which has been achieved through a great deal of effort with different levels of government, is ultimately going to provide more opportunities that will be for the betterment of the child, the individual parent or guardian, the child care worker and Canadian society as a whole. That is the point that needs to be emphasized.
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Madam Speaker, I rise today on behalf of my constituents of King—Vaughan.
Bill C-35, an act respecting early learning and child care in Canada, sets a vision for a Canada-wide early learning and child care system committed to ongoing collaboration with provinces and indigenous people to support efforts to “establish and maintain”. Just over 52% of Canadian children younger than six years were in licensed or unlicensed child care in 2022. This bill proposes to cut day care fees by an average of 50% by the end of 2022 and down to an average of $10 per day by 2026.
Bill C-35 is a step in the right direction. However, it is too generic and does not consider or address many obstacles that parents face when accessing child care. Affordable, quality child care is critical, but if it cannot be accessed, it does not help families. Bill C-35 is beneficial for families that already have a child care space, but it does not help the thousands of families on child care wait-lists or the operators who do not have the staff or infrastructure to offer more spaces.
I forgot to mention that I will be sharing my time with the member of Parliament for Battlefords—Lloydminster.
In Ontario alone, the Financial Accountability Office says that demand for the program will exceed the number of available spaces. The FAO estimates that by 2026, approximately 600,000 children under the age of six will have potential access to $10-a-day child care, but only 375,000 licensed child care spaces will be available. Therefore, approximately 227,000 children under the age of six will be left behind, not able to access the $10-a-day child care.
Canada needs far more child care spaces than it has, and Bill C-35 would not address the need for increased child care infrastructure. The Liberal government simply offering up grants and subsidies through Bill C-35 does neither initiate nor promote operators to step up and start up centres where they are needed.
Bill C-35 also fails to address the child care labour shortage. There is currently not enough qualified staff to keep all existing child care centres running at full capacity. Child care workers in Canada continue to leave the sector due to the low pay and poor working conditions. The majority of child care professionals are overworked and suffer burnout. The shortage of workers means that in many communities there is only one child care space available for every three children who need it and wait-lists are long.
According to the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Bill C-35 fails to address the shortage of early childhood educators and child care workers. Until the child care staffing crisis is resolved, the promise of affordable and high-quality child care for every family in Canada that needs it will remain unfulfilled.
One of Bill C-35's commitments is to provide more accessible child care to indigenous people and contribute to the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous early learning and child care programs that focus on the languages and culture identities of first nations, Métis and Inuit communities have been found to contribute to better educational outcomes for indigenous children and help to build their language ability and sense of cultural pride. However, there is a shortage of indigenous workers trained in early childhood education in Canada, particularly because of challenges they face in acquiring training, such as cost, entrance requirements and residence in remote areas with restricted technology.
According to Statistics Canada, indigenous childhood educators and assistants and child care providers are less likely to have post-secondary education compared to their non-indigenous counterparts. Although claiming to support indigenous child care, Bill C-35 would do nothing to address the shortage in indigenous child care workers or the disparity of education between indigenous and non-indigenous child care workers.
The guiding principle of the framework for Bill C-35 heavily gives preferential treatment to public and non-for-profit day cares over small business models. This piece of the bill opens the door to a two-tier framework of child care across Canada.
Quality child care comes in all shapes and sizes. In Canada, options for child care range from nannies and home day care to day care centres, preschool programs, and before- and after-school programs. By giving preferential treatment to public and not-for-profit child care, Bill C-35 discriminates against women. The majority of child care operators are women, and the language and intent of this bill prevent any growth and opportunities for private female operators.
How would Bill C-35 assist single parents who do not have regularly scheduled nine-to-five jobs? This issue is not addressed in the bill. How does Bill C-35 address child care for children with disabilities? In British Columbia, children with disabilities are continuously left behind when it comes to child care. There is no official count on how many child care sites are accessible for kids with disabilities, because there is no provincial definition of what makes a child care site inclusive. How about grandparents who have stepped up and put their retirement on hold for their grandchildren?
The 2021 federal budget pledges $30 million in new spending on the national child care system over five years, with another $9.2 billion annually. These stats are coming from the Liberals' numbers.
Morna Ballantyne, executive director of Child Care Now, told CBC News, on the implementation of Bill C-35:
...we'd like to see...a full report on what progress has been made with respect to the system building in each jurisdiction. How many spaces have been created, where have they been created? Who's operating the spaces that have been created, what are the ages of the children being served by the new spaces?
We really think there needs to be a proper and full public accounting of how the money, the public money, has been spent.
The minister is on record saying that providing the federal government with details of the provinces' child care plans is a condition of their deals with Ottawa, but how can we trust that? This is coming from a government that has eight years of failed Liberal policy and does not hold itself accountable for it.
This is coming from the same government that spent $54 million on an ineffective ArriveCAN app and refuses to supply Canadians with a full list of all the contractors who got the money. This is coming from the same government that has $28 billion of suspicious spending and another $4.6 billion of outright waste. This is coming from the same government that failed to keep children's medication on the shelves.
Can Canada really trust the government to implement a quality child care system and ensure this federal funding is properly used? From the lack of detail in Bill C-35, I am not so trusting. Amendments need to be made to ensure all Canadians have access to quality child care.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague across the way is very fixated on details and numbers and spending. The government is supporting Ontario's efforts to grow its child care system by providing $10.2 billion over five years as part of our agreement with the Province of Ontario. In turn, Ontario has promised to create 86,000 spaces. Premier Doug Ford called it “a great deal for Ontario”. That is exactly what he said on March 31 when we announced that deal. I would like to ask if the member opposite agrees with the Premier of Ontario.
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Mr. Speaker, I am not doubting that we need to take care of our children. Our children are our future. I have no doubt of that. My question is, do we have enough staff to support these child care centres and do we have enough spaces? I have not personally seen any evidence of that. We need to ensure that all this documentation is provided to all members of this House so that we can also ensure that our children are taken care of moving forward.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from King—Vaughan, who serves alongside me on the Standing Committee on the Status of Women.
In several studies that the committee has conducted since I joined it, we have observed that Quebec has a really wonderful model that was put in place by a feminist. Pauline Marois created a unique model. The economic impact of early childhood centres in Quebec was clear in the study on the impacts of COVID-19 during the pandemic and how women were disproportionately affected, as well as in the study on invisible work, where this issue of child care also came up. Many economists will say it: This has allowed thousands of women to return to the labour market. This is crucial.
It was interesting to hear the member talk about jurisdiction. In my view, this falls under Quebec's jurisdiction. It is a model. If the rest of Canada wants to emulate it, that is fine, but Quebec has jurisdiction over this issue. Furthermore, any tax credit that might be put in place, as some Conservatives want, will never happen.
Let us remember why early childhood centres were created. It was to provide equal opportunities for young children and all women. Quebec's child care system is perfect. The rest of Canada should use it as a model, but the government needs to sign an agreement giving us the right to opt out with full compensation and giving us the money to manage the system we have in place.
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Mr. Speaker, I enjoy working with my hon. colleague on the status of women committee. We should learn from what Quebec is doing. I have no issues with that at all.
However, we also need to ensure that, province by province, we are all different. Each province has different needs, and we need to ensure that each province will at least adhere to the principles that we know will protect our children and provide women the opportunity to make that choice, whether or not they choose to go back to work.
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Mr. Speaker, the member was talking about discrimination against women, and I found myself reflecting on what really does discriminate against women.
We know that what discriminates against women is not having access to public and non-profit child care that provides affordable, high-quality and accessible day care for families who need it, not day care that makes profit off the backs of parents. We also know that public and non-profit child care provides better wages and working conditions for staff, who are predominantly women.
The member is clearly very much in support of child care. How can the member justify throwing away a bill that would provide national, accessible, affordable child care for families as being in the best of interests of anybody?
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