44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 31, 2023 02:00PM
Madam Speaker, I think real leadership is not choosing to see what one wants to see, but seeing the truth and acknowledging all of that, and this is so insulting to the families. I am going to look to Saskatchewan right now, where 10% of families have access to child care. That is 90% that do not, so it is not true that it is wonderful, great and life changing for everyone. I guess what we are looking for is what the plan is, because this is not working. So many families are being left out, and the data says that.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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Madam Speaker, that is so typical from the Conservatives. They are saying, “Things are not perfect, so let us just do absolutely nothing.” On this side of the House, the Liberals say that, if we see a challenge, we should go forward and fix it. We should work with Canadians and their energy, and we should make sure we can do all of those things. If the member wants to see the plan, it is all public on the website. The Government of Canada has published its bilateral agreements with the provinces and territories. Saskatchewan, for example, has a great action plan. It is looking to expand child care across the country. Instead of saying we are not going to do anything and it is a problem, we are saying we are going to invest, bring forward legislation and fix it.
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Mr. Speaker, what an amazing speech that was to hear, from a woman who has so much lived experience, has worked on this file, has been a parliamentarian and who knows that balance and knows how challenging it is to find quality, reliable child care and affordability.
What we have seen repeatedly is that the reason we are here is that we are trying to ensure that all voices are heard, but, based on the amendments that were put forth through committee by the Conservatives, they were not. Therefore, it is very important that we read into the record and people hear the stories, like that of Melissa, that we have talked about and the stories that seem to be ignored. Saskatchewan is a child care desert, where 90% of families cannot access child care.
What are the member's thoughts, based on what we have seen tonight? Does she really believe that this is just a political wedge? We have heard from the minister that this is all an anti-Conservative bill, and I am curious to hear her thoughts on that.
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Madam Speaker, a lot of us can relate to what it is like to have a baby and that feeling of being overwhelmed, which is why child care is so important and it is so important for families to know they can send their child somewhere that is safe, that is going to provide quality development and education and that their child will be well cared for.
I need to correct the record. The hon. colleague ended by saying that if one has a home day care one is not eligible to participate in this program. That is simply false. In fact, in his own province of Saskatchewan, that is one of the ways it is increasing access to child care, through licensed day homes, particularly in rural areas.
This is typical of the Conservatives, who I am not sure have actually read the legislation or read the agreements, so they do not actually know what we are debating tonight, which in fact is an amendment to the short title of the bill. I have asked every single Conservative colleague here if they will be supporting Bill C-35. I have yet to hear a clear response.
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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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- May/31/23 11:31:25 p.m.
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The hon. parliamentary secretary knows better. He should be setting an example in the House.
The hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.
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- May/31/23 11:31:49 p.m.
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That is right, so the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan has 12 seconds.
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