44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 31, 2023 02:00PM
Madam Speaker, I just want to reiterate that there is no holdup. These agreements are already signed with provinces and territories.
What is important now is a lot of what the member has brought up. There is no labour strategy, something that we put forward in committee. It was actually voted down by the NDP and the Liberals. We know how important this is.
The other issue that I know the NDP cares deeply about, and I support, is those who are less fortunate, those who are living in poverty. This bill has been criticized by many people for having a Matthew effect. The Matthew effect is basically when the government intervenes by increasing public provision, but this ends up advantaging higher-income rather than lower-income groups.
Does the member feel that the bill needs to be strengthened to ensure that those living below poverty also have access to child care?
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Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her work in this area. I know she has been working hard in this area as well.
I am happy to answer questions around access to quality child care and income not being a barrier to accessing that child care. This is exactly the root of why my NDP colleagues and I have been pushing for publicly funded child care. We know that, through publicly funded child care, we see increases in access to child care and better working conditions for those who are working in the field. Ultimately, this helps to ensure that we have equitable opportunities for all children, regardless of income.
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Madam Speaker, I listened to my colleague's speech with great interest. I think sharing stories about our own experiences, particularly those of us who have been single mothers, is very valuable.
Comparing her situation with mine, I was a single mom in Quebec, where I had access to quality low-cost day care. This permitted me to go back to school and improve my situation. It was excellent-quality, publicly funded day care. Could my colleague comment on why she had such a difficult experience? Why did her province not have a similar system?
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Madam Speaker, I am always happy to hear from other parents and women who have raised children or are raising children in this House. We definitely need to see more representation. I am happy to hear that the member had such a positive experience.
I think this really highlights the need for a national approach. We see differences across Canada in what is being made available to families. Quite frankly, the experience of many is that they are not being provided with the options at the cost that is required for them to access the care they need.
If we saw the federal leadership in place with the investment required, all provinces and territories would be better able to provide the care options that meet families' needs across the country.
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith brought back to mind something that my colleagues in this place might find incredible.
In 1992, when I was a single mom making $24,000 a year as a self-employed contractor and executive director of Sierra Club Canada, I hired a babysitting firm. I was able to hire a caregiver for $1,000 a month. Since she made only $1,000 a month, she had 100% subsidized child care for her children while she looked after my daughter. None of it made any sense to me.
I would like to see this legislation through. I would like to make sure that every child in this country has access to high-quality early childhood education and learning and child care.
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Madam Speaker, I so agree with the comments that were made by the member. It really speaks to the fact that we need to be working with all those who are invested in this important work, including unions, non-profits, our public schools and the provinces. We all need to be on board with this work to move forward. I really reflect on the important work to integrate child care within the existing schools that is happening in my province of British Columbia, alongside school districts. This is essential to ensure that children have the care that they need before and after.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this place and contribute to this debate on Bill C-35.
The Liberals claim that their goal with Bill C-35 is to provide affordable child care to Canadians. However, what is the point of creating a system of so-called affordable child care if Canadians cannot access it? Since this bill was introduced, we have heard from many individuals, many stakeholders, that the major issue with child care is that Canadians do not have access to it. This bill does nothing to address the issue of accessibility. It is disappointing to families across Canada that, despite the two to three decades of planning to nationalize child care, the government has come up with such a flawed piece of legislation that will do nothing to address the real issues that Canadian families are facing.
My home province of Saskatchewan, for example, has very few child care spaces. Only 17.8% of children from zero to five years of age have access to full-day or part-time child care spaces. It gets even worse when we include children from the ages of six to 12, as only 10% have access to full-day or part-time day care spaces. This bill will not create spaces to address this shortage. As a mom and a grandmother of 11, I understand the importance of having access to quality day care.
While this could have been an opportunity for the government to put forward thoughtful measures to help Canadian families get access to quality child care, the Liberals have failed to do this. Perhaps that is the issue when the elites believe they understand the problems that average Canadians face.
This bill was introduced as a part of the confidence and supply agreement, which sees the New Democrats support the Liberal minority government through to 2025. Despite the ongoing issues plaguing the government, the New Democrats have declared that they will stick by the government through thick and thin, while claiming to hold it to account. It is as though someone were telling people to put out a fire while simultaneously pouring gasoline on it. The bill was a priority for the confidence and supply deal, and it continues the government's culture of mediocrity and ineptitude. If the government had bothered to speak with average Canadian families about child care, again, it would know that the biggest issue is accessibility. We could make child care free, but if people cannot access it, it might as well not exist.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees currently reports that “in many communities there is only one childcare space available for every three children who need it, and waitlists are long.” The lack of spaces in child care is underscored by labour shortages, which we have heard about, and staff burnout. Many child care facilities do not even have enough employees to fully staff existing child care centres, let alone new spaces.
Government estimates also suggest that, by 2026, there could be a shortage of 8,500 early childhood workers. We also found, through my colleagues’ work at committee, that the government and its NDP allies are not really interested in helping families to access these child care spaces. At committee, Conservatives introduced an amendment to include all types of child care to ensure that the program was inclusive and reflected parental choice, not political ideology. Of course, this was defeated by the Liberal-NDP coalition as it sought to force an Ottawa-knows-best solution on Canadian families across the country.
Another Conservative amendment sought to amend the national child care council to have representatives from private, home-based providers alongside public and not-for-profit providers. This was supported by testimony from Julie Bisnath, program coordinator for the Child Care Providers Resource Network, who stated, “Championing home child care as a central part of CWELCC would increase access to a diverse array of child care options.”
Despite being a common-sense amendment to address one of the major issues regarding child care in this country, the Liberals and NDP voted it down. One is left to believe that they are intent on imposing their views on Canadians instead of allowing Canadians to live freely and make their own choices for their child care needs.
It seems to me that we may be seeing a pattern here that the NDP-Liberal coalition is not interested in actually addressing the labour shortage, which is the biggest hurdle, as I have already stated, to providing more child care spots to Canadians.
There was another amendment put forward by Conservatives that would directly address the labour shortage. This amendment sought to amend the function of the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care and includes supporting the recruitment and retention of a well-qualified workforce and conducting regular engagement. It includes a specific mandate calling for maintaining and understanding available child care spaces, the numbers on wait-lists and the progress made to reduce wait-lists for families. It makes sense. Additionally, this amendment would have required the council to provide an annual report on its progress. That also makes sense if one is serious about addressing the real issues.
Another Conservative amendment sought to amend the reporting clause of the bill to include the Minister of Labour. What a novel idea when looking at addressing labour shortages to include the Minister of Labour in the annual reporting, and that the annual reporting must include a national labour strategy to recruit and retain a qualified early childhood education workforce. This supports witness testimony, which was again heard at committee during the study on the importance of a strong national labour strategy dictating the success of a national child care framework.
Bea Bruske, President of the Canadian Labour Congress, stated, “That would absolutely be an amendment we would support because we know that we need a robust workforce strategy to make sure that we can address the recruitment and retention issues in the sector.”
The Coalition of Child Care Advocates of British Columbia, in a briefing note, wrote, “We strongly recommend the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care must...provide an annual publicly available report to the Minister on the work of the Advisory Council in meeting the goals set out in the Act.”
Those two amendments, again, were both voted down by the Bloc, the Liberals and their NDP coalition partners. It is concerning that they may have voted against them just because they were brought forward by the Conservative members on the committee or it could be that the NDP members have forgotten that they are supposed to be holding the Liberal government to account to put forward meaningful and effective legislation. Whatever the reason, voting down these common-sense amendments shows how out of touch their Liberal coalition partners are. Canadians will be stuck on wait-lists for child care for years, if they ever get a spot at all.
Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office projects that by 2026 there will be 602,000 children under six whose families will want a $10-a-day care program and the province will only be able to accommodate 375,000 of them, leaving 227,000, or 38%, without access.
For a government that claims to be feminist, it is not considering the significant impacts that its policies are having on women with young children. Families are diverse and have different needs depending on their circumstances and a rigid, Ottawa-knows-best approach is not going to help them. The lack of spots will have an effect on women in the workforce as they will tend to be the primary caretakers if there are no available child care spots.
This bill does not address the major issues in the child care system that Canadian families are facing across this country and certainly not in my province. Despite Conservative efforts to improve the bill, it is obvious the NDP-Liberal coalition is not interested in seriously addressing these major issues.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Saskatchewan for her comments tonight. However, I would encourage her to actually read what is available in the public data record on agreements online. Her own province, in 2022, created 1,800 new spaces and 409 new licensed child care spaces in 41 communities. What was a child care desert continues to be an issue, but without this work, without these agreements, those spaces would not have existed. Even more so, by the end of 2023, there will be 4,000 new spaces in 31 urban and rural communities.
The member talked about inclusion. The Conservatives seem to be redefining “inclusion”, but inclusion is very clear. It is about who receives care: those with vulnerabilities, children with disabilities and so on. However, should taxpayer dollars be paying for private entrepreneurship? I do not think so from the public purse. I would like to know, if those issues are addressed, as I have clearly explained, will the Conservatives support Bill C-35?
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Madam Speaker, it is an interesting question: if those issues are addressed. However, they are not. The bill does not address the very issues that many other members in the House have highlighted: affordability, accessibility and a labour strategy to ensure that we have a robust workforce to provide the services that Canadian families are calling for.
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Madam Speaker, many members of the Conservative Party have stood up tonight, despite the fact that this is simply a debate on the title, to talk about affordability for Canadians. However, one of the biggest challenges I have is that we see time and time again Conservatives voting against those things that would make life more affordable.
I am wondering if the member could speak a little bit about the fact that things like dental care make life affordable for Canadians and things like support for housing make things affordable for Canadians. Could the member talk about those things that would make things more affordable for Canadians and perhaps tell us, as much as she says that she likes child care and that she believes in child care, why she would not want the bill to go forward even in a flawed form knowing that it would provide child care to so many Canadian families?
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Madam Speaker, it is not that I like child care. I mean, that is diminishing the importance of child care to say “Great, she likes child care.” Child care is important.
As a mom and a grandmother, I had to access child care. I have children who have to access child care, and when they are getting close to their maternity leave being finished, there is anxiety created, because they do not know where they are going to find child care so that they can go back to work to provide for their families.
Under this government's policy, with the support of the NDP, Canadians are struggling to pay their bills and put food on the table. Having to worry about access to child care is not something that we should be supporting by introducing a bill that would not address accessibility, affordability or a labour strategy.
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Madam Speaker, the member talked a lot about accessibility, and that is very important. I represent a very large rural riding, and there are folks there who require child care for their children as well. They have been creative and found solutions through family, friends and community members, but they are not licensed day cares and so they would get punished by this government with this policy by not getting $10-a-day child care. I am wondering if my colleague thinks that is fair.
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Madam Speaker, families across Canada are in need of flexibility when it comes to child care. They will have different needs depending on their circumstances, particularly families, as he has pointed out, who have needs outside of standard hours of operation.
My suggestion is that this government go back and take a look at this legislation that it has introduced, review the testimony that its members have heard, and really seek to address the issues that families all across this country have highlighted to be inherent with this piece of legislation.
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Madam Speaker, it is great to rise in this House to speak about Bill C-35. In fact, what we have been discussing today, with very lively debate, is an act representing early learning and child care in Canada. What we have heard in this debate has a lot to do with affordability, and the Liberals and New Democrats have been talking about this a lot. I find it interesting that, despite child care being promised since about the 1990s, the Liberals have finally made a move on it, driven in large part by the affordability crisis that is hitting Canada.
We have first-time homebuyers who are having a very difficult time getting into the housing market, buying a home and starting a family and starting that Canadian dream. We have those who maybe have a house who are struggling to eat. We see that food bank usage is up pretty much everywhere in this country. One alarming rate that was in the news not too long ago was that first-time food bank usage was up, and that is a very startling statistic, when we think about those going to the food bank for the very first time. That is the desperation that is being felt across Canada.
Now we are discussing a child care bill that really would not do anything with affordability. I will kind of explain why I believe that is and articulate, and maybe build on, some of the arguments that were made here tonight in our speeches.
We still have the issue of the labour shortage in the child care spaces, so that is the one part of this very important puzzle that really is not addressed in the bill, and we see that labour shortage is starting to affect many other sectors of our economy. It can be in health care, child care and pretty much anywhere. I think anywhere an employer is, they are probably looking for workers. We need to address that, and it is not being addressed.
We also are looking at the ability to just access spaces that are there. In the bill, priority would go to the public and not-for-profit spaces. There is no room for those private sector spaces that are being created to help alleviate the crises, both affordability and access to spaces. Of course, if we had more choice of public, not-for-profit and for-profit in a competitive marketplace, we would actually find more options. When we have more options we have better choices to make, because competition makes everything better. We would get a better product at a better price with a better service. Everyone tries to improve with that model.
We can even go a bit further with this, in that child care spaces in a competitive market could be flexible to the very unique situations Canadians find themselves living in. Work schedules are not always nine to five. We have shift workers, students and a myriad of challenges that parents have to juggle with, and when we really limit the choices for parents, they basically get what they are given. Whether they like it and whether it works for them, it does not matter, whereas if there are more options and more choice, maybe there would be a day care, and I am sure there are many, that would adjust to the needs of very flexible schedules.
When there is abundance, there is peace. When there is abundance there is choice. The more abundance there is in any society, the happier the population. The less choice there is, the grumpier the population.
When we have the contracting of the economy and we have a space where there are shortages, we always see conflict, and that is why I think we raise this quite often. In all our speeches that I have been listening to tonight, the same points get made. We are hearing from our constituents these exact concerns over and over again, and once the government gets involved in providing a service, other competitors find themselves at a disadvantage. They have to compete against a subsidized environment, and then we start to phase out those additional spaces that are provided by the private sector, leaving only the government option, which as I mentioned just a few moments ago, is rarely flexible and often does not properly service rural communities.
Do not get me wrong. There are lots of providers in my community, and many others across the country, who are absolutely doing the best they can. I have yet to meet a child care professional who does not give their all each and every day. They are some of the best people I have ever met, and they do so because they love their community, they love their job and they want to see young ones grow up and be the best they can be. However, if people cannot access the child care spaces, it is hard to get that learning going.
It has to also be flexible. When the government oversees this level of control where only a certain selected few are getting funded, then basically it is just a proxy of government.
Money will be spent. Results will not be achieved like they could be. When we have a competitive market, we get rapid innovation. Let us think about what has been achieved over our lifetimes and those before ours and the economic prosperity that has been achieved. Things that were once only accessible to the very rich have become very affordable to the vast majority of Canadians, and that is a good thing. That is a great thing. We look back to when people used to wash their clothes by hand. Now, I believe pretty much everyone has a washer and dryer. That is a good thing because entrepreneurs, inventors and creators started to make the things that, at one time, only the rich had and made them affordable for the vast majority of people.
The same can be said for child care. When we have different ideas and different people doing different things, going back to abundance, and abundance equals peace, we can start to have a myriad of differences in the child care space. Again, that is a very good thing.
However, when the government continues to pick winners or losers in the marketplace, we get slower innovation. We see that in the energy sector and we see that in growing sectors with the government picking winners and losers in industries and expecting a better result.
I do not think there is any Canadian who is very happy with the telecom industry. There is no competition in the telecom industry. We sometimes like to pretend there is, but there really is not. People basically get what they are given, whether they like it or not. How is that working out for Canadians? We have some of the highest rates anywhere in the world. Again, when we talk about child care, it needs to include everything.
We talk about our energy industry. The government is contracting that. It has been punishing our oil and gas sector for years, and our mining industry. Forestry is hurting. The government is contracting the energy market, leaving what is available to obviously go up in price. One way it could lower energy costs is to strip away the tax. The other is to add supply. When we add supply to anything, it lowers the price. That is including food and day care too.
Since I am from Ontario, I will read this statistic out here by Ontario's Financial Accountability Office. It projects that by 2026, which is not too far away, there will be 602,000 children under six whose families will want $10-a-day day care, and the province will only be able to accommodate 375,000 of them, leaving about 38% without access. This is a major issue. Going back to what I first mentioned at the beginning of my speech, the labour part of this conversation is left out of this bill.
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Madam Speaker, we seem to have delved into the energy sector when we are supposed to be talking about child care.
Nevertheless, I would like to remind the member that the bill reinforces the agreements. The Premier of Ontario signed their agreement. He was the last one to sign, and since signing that agreement, 33 new child care spaces have been created. It is one of the provinces that actively grandfathered in private child care operators and continues to work with them to ensure that there is growth, choice and flexibility within the province.
I do not seem to understand how we have gone from a bill that is aspirational to ensuring that we continue with this, considering the Conservatives ripped up the previous agreements from this time. Now that we are here, there are agreements and Bill C-35 is here, will the Conservatives support Bill C-35?
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Madam Speaker, just to answer the member opposite's first part, I was talking about the energy sector. My point was that, when we have abundance, that equals peace. When we have excess in spaces, we are able to lower the price and provide a range of options. When one includes public and not-for-profit as well as, yes, for-profit day care centres, it gives Canadians choice. It gives them the opportunity to go with what works for them.
Of course, we have students with flexible schedules. We have shift workers. Unfortunately, the government plan does not address that.
There is also this report here that is talking about child care deserts in Canada. It is affecting nearly 50% of younger children. It is a very concerning report talking about the lack of spaces in this country.
There was a part of my speech during which I talked about the labour part of it. That is not addressed in this legislation. I would like to see the Liberals start to focus on the whole range and take into account what we have been saying here tonight.
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Madam Speaker, I was just reading a report done by CCPA called The Harper Record. It says:
Giving financial incentives to businesses to create spaces has been tried before and failed. It was such bad policy that even members of the minister's hand-picked advisory group raised objections and was roundly criticized when the government's policy folks conducted cross-country consultations on how it could be made to work.
The report goes on to say, “The fallout from Harper's child care policy will be felt for years to come. Federal transfers specifically designated for early learning and child care were reduced by almost 37% in 2007-08...In 2006, only 19.3% of children five and under had access to...child care”.
The NDP and my colleague, the member for Winnipeg Centre, had pushed the government and drove the agenda to get $10-a-day child care nationally. This bill before us would address some elements of accountability with reporting, so we can have—
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- May/31/23 10:59:46 p.m.
- Watch
The hon. member for Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock.
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Madam Speaker, unfortunately, I do not think the hon. member was listening to my speech. I was actually talking about how we add to the supply, and that adding is always better than subtracting.
If I heard correctly, I am pretty sure that the member from Vancouver said that she is against giving public money to companies. Does that mean she is against the billions given to Volkswagen? Do I understand that correctly, or is it just for those that the member from the NDP agrees with?
When we are talking about this child care issue, we want to see more spaces rather than fewer. That means more choice for parents because more selection and more choice equals a better product, service and price.
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Madam Speaker, it is wonderful to join my voice to the debate tonight in speaking to this important bill, but first I want to take a moment to thank all the first responders and firefighters who are working so hard to keep people safe. I especially want to give a big thanks to all the volunteers who have opened up their hearts and homes, and all of the people who are sharing their time, talent and treasure to make all of those who have been displaced by fire feel welcome.
To get to the matter at hand, as people have probably realized, families look different across our country and across so many different spaces and places. This is such a challenging spot because there is not enough child care. While this bill has some very lofty goals in it, it has not necessarily created the child care spaces, which has created some unique challenges.
Coming from Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, I have had the opportunity to speak to a number of families that have a different type of work environment than many. I have had the opportunity to meet a lot of shift workers, a lot of moms who are nurses while the dad is a firefighter, or they both work up in the oil sands in a variety of spaces and have shifts that cross every so often.
One of the biggest pieces I heard from that was that the standard Monday to Friday, nine-to-five child care just does not fit their families. They need child care three overnights a week, or they need child care six days a month because, between their shifts and their spouse's shifts, they can mostly be home with the kids, but the rigidity of the Monday to Friday, nine-to-five, Ottawa-knows-best child care, which works well in some locations, does not work well in all locations.
This is part of the problem. In the community of Cold Lake, I get to chat with so many amazing Armed Forces members who serve our country so diligently, going on deployments all around Canada and the world, not only protecting us but also standing up as part of our NATO allies and protecting peace in the world. That Monday to Friday, nine-to-five child care especially does not work for them. It makes it that much more difficult. I was chatting with one woman just last week, and she was explaining to me how they had delayed having a family, not because they could not afford it but because they were not sure how they would physically make it work, as both she and her husband serve. They were asking how they would piece this together to do something when the availability is not there.
In the past, many parents and families would have relied on perhaps a nanny or a live-in caregiver of some sort, but because of the extensive delays in immigration, that path is not as available or accessible as it had been in the past.
That is one of the overwhelming pieces I have heard in my role as the member of Parliament for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake. For a lot of parents who I chat with, a lot of my friends and people in my communities, their number one ask is for flexible child care. They want to see some innovation. They want to see something that serves their family unit, understanding that it looks a lot different than perhaps the average or what used to be.
This does not seem to be addressed in this bill. I think this is part of the problem because the Liberals are solving a problem for what the average family might have looked like 30 years ago. That is not what today's families necessarily look like. That is something that I think we can and should do better on.
I am participating virtually, and I am addressing this chamber for the first time in over a month because I had a baby. The fact that we have flexibility in our Parliament to allow people to participate and still be full members, giving speeches, asking question, giving member's statements and participating in committees virtually, allows more women to be able to participate.
If we are going to continue allowing child care to just fit into this box and say that it has to be a certain way, that having a grandma look after her grandkids or having a trusted neighbour fill that role cannot be part of someone's solution, then I do not think that necessarily gets to the space.
While I was trying to prepare for this speech, I decided to call some child care operators I know. One of the child care operators I called is a friend of mine. Her name is Kyla Penner, and she owns KPSquared here in Fort McMurray. KPSquared is an amazing child care facility that has innovative child care, and it is actually expanding to have 24-hour child care. One of the coolest pieces about its child care model is that it really focuses on the family unit. It has the availability for parents to select when they need the child care. If they only need six days a month, they can pick those six days a month. If they need overnight care, very soon, they will be able to pick overnight care. This gives flexibility to a lot of families, and it is something that works for a lot of families.
Before the child care deal came into place, KPSquared was very sought after in our community, and it had a wait-list of approximately 300 people. Today, I asked Kyla how many people were on the wait-list. She said over 625, but she would need to look to get a more precise number than that. It is not access to child care if the length of the wait-list is 625 people. I talk to so many parents, and I see so many Facebook and Internet forums that talk about the fact that the reality is this: Parents are going and putting their kids on every single wait-list they can possibly find because they just need child care, and they have been promised it.
They have been told that, somehow, there is $10 child care, but we have not actually put the infrastructure into place to make this work. We have not spent the time talking to parents or child care providers to hear where some of those bottlenecks are. The bottlenecks that I have heard about are the fact that we do not have enough early childhood educators to be able to meet the demands so that we can have the staffing. We do not have enough people in those positions, and we do not have a system or a plan in place on how to educate people enough to be able to meet those needs. We also have not figured out that not all parents pick child care based on price. A lot of them pick child care based on flexibility, the proximity to work, how convenient it is for the family unit, or religious or linguistic requirements.
I have heard from many families who picked one child care space over another because they valued being able to have their children in a francophone day care, because that was very important to their family. This is all important. It is something we should value. We should be trying to see how we can expand to let a grandmother assist.
I heard the minister say earlier that it is a lot of work and that grandparents should not be expected to do that. I am not saying that grandparents should be expected to do it. That is not an option in my family. Both my parents are gone. My dad passed away this last year and my mom a dozen years ago, so that is not even an option. However, I have friends whose parents get their joy from being the primary provider of care for their grandchildren. They retired early specifically to be able to make that work for their family. For those families who have that as an option, I do not understand why we would not be supporting that.
That is going to be part of how we get enough spaces, so that the families who do not have that as an option, or do not want to use that for a variety of very good reasons, have the space available to them. What I am saying is that families look different. I am going to continue stressing this, because I think it is so important.
We need flexibility in our child care. We need innovation. We need more people like Kyla and KPSquared, because that is how we are going to solve this problem, not by creating an Ottawa-knows-best, one-size-fits-all solution.
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