44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 14, 2023 02:00PM
- Jun/14/23 8:44:19 p.m.
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I have received notice from all recognized parties that they are in agreement with this request.
The hon. member for Burnaby South.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski.
Today, I am speaking in favour of Bill C-35. It is something that New Democrats are proudly supportive of. It is a bill that establishes a national early learning and child care system.
Why this bill is so important is because it is transformative. It is another example of New Democrats never giving up. We fought hard for years alongside many advocates who said that we needed affordable child care. Affordable child care really is a transformational thing in the lives of people. Let us think about the reality for families right now and look at what people are going through with the cost of living so high, mortgages so high and the cost of groceries so high. A lot of families who want to have children look at the costs and say that there is no way they can do it, especially if they both cannot continue to work. That is a reality for many families. Many women who often fall into the role of having to be the primary child care provider want to get back into their careers and continue to work. When they look at the cost of child care they say it is simply impossible. To ensure that families across this country can have affordable child care is literally a transformational thing in the lives of so many. We believe this is so important.
Bill C-35 represents a long-standing commitment of the New Democrats to see national child care introduced. That is why we included this as a requirement in our agreement. This is a specific element we forced the Liberals to include in our confidence and supply agreement to legislate it and make it permanent so we do not rest on the whim of a one-time negotiation, but that we forever in this country have child care that is available and affordable for families. That is exactly what New Democrats do. We commit to fighting for people. We fight for people, we never back down, and we continue to fight until we win, and we deliver for Canadians. This is an example of New Democrats delivering. We promised to deliver permanent child care. We delivered it using our power in this minority government and forcing the Liberals to include this in our confidence and supply agreement.
I want to also acknowledge my colleague, the member for Winnipeg Centre, for all of the hard work she did on this file. It took a lot of work. She has been a strong advocate for child care generally and she played a crucial role in the shaping of this bill.
One thing that is really emphasized in the bill is that it not only provides an opportunity for investing federal dollars into child care but to also build the type of child care we want for the future. The choice is, like many choices when it comes to providing services for people, whether we allow a for-profit system to continue to grow or we make it clear through legislation that New Democrats believe this is our opportunity to build up the public and not-for-profit sector. That is exactly what this legislation does. It prioritizes public and not-for-profit child care, which builds child care that is of the highest quality, where every dollar goes toward the care of our children, and does not provide an opportunity for rich corporations to make more money.
The NDP fought hard to have public, not-for-profit child care prioritized in this bill. We know that this approach means affordable, high-quality child care that is accessible to families who need it, not child care that puts profits first to the detriment of parents and children. This means better salaries and better working conditions for child care workers, who play an essential role in our children's development.
I also want to make a clear contrast here. While we used our power to force the government to legislate child care to ensure that it will be there moving forward, we have seen the Conservatives oppose this bill every step of the way and say they want to scrap it. As the member from the Bloc mentioned, in Quebec there was a time when there were people like the Conservatives who said we needed to get rid of child care, but it is so clearly beneficial to families that no one in Quebec would dare oppose it. I dare the Conservatives, once millions of families are benefiting from affordable child care, once people in their constituencies are benefiting from it, to try to remove this bill and try to fight against child care.
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- Jun/14/23 8:49:56 p.m.
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The hon. member for Peterborough—Kawartha is rising on a point of order.
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Madam Speaker, I am not sure why the member is telling the House that Conservatives are not supporting this bill. That is not true.
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- Jun/14/23 8:50:07 p.m.
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That is not a point of order. The hon. member may ask a question in questions and comments and refer to it then.
The hon. member for Burnaby South.
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Madam Speaker, the leader of the Conservative Party made it very clear that he would scrap this bill and that he is opposed to it. New Democrats are very clear on our position: We are here for people. We are not here to protect the profits of billionaires. We want to ensure that families are able to get access to affordable child care, and that is what we are delivering here.
The NDP worked with experts in the sector to strengthen this bill during committee stage. We presented constructive proposals to improve the provisions in the bill on reporting and accountability. We also fought to get a commitment on decent working conditions for child care workers, who deserve to be treated with respect. I am proud to say that our amendments were agreed to and they strengthened the bill considerably.
I am proud to say that one of the things New Democrats always bring to the table is a focus on workers. We know that to ensure that the highest quality of care is delivered for children, we need to make sure the workers are respected and have good salaries and good working conditions, and that is something that we are really proud we were able to deliver in this bill.
Every parent in our country deserves access to high-quality, affordable, accessible child care. That is what we are focused on and that is what we are committed to delivering. This bill would enshrine that vision in law. It would commit that the federal government will continue to deliver long-term funding to provinces and indigenous people. It is a victory for parents, and it is a victory for workers and for all the advocates who have fought for years to see national child care established. It is a step toward gender equality and toward a solid economic recovery plan that ensures that more people can participate in the labour force.
We have come a long way and we are proud of that. There is still a lot more work to do, but we will continue to fight for better wages, better benefits and a workforce strategy for child care. We will continue to fight to make sure that these investments go toward building up a public, not-for-profit sector. We can build a child care program across this country that Canadians will be proud of. It will be a testament of the commitment we have to take care of one another. That is the vision New Democrats have. We are stronger and better off when we look out for one another, and that is the vision of this child care legislation.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the leader of the New Democratic Party and the entire NDP caucus for their collaboration and for their support of Bill C-35. This is something that all parliamentarians can be extraordinarily proud of. It is historic and it will transform this country.
We have heard the Conservative leader of the official opposition call the support that the federal government is providing to families through child care a slush fund. Tonight the Conservatives said this is just slogans, meaningless and a false promise, although, as I mentioned, thousands of Canadian families are directly benefiting from this program already.
I am wondering, first, what the leader of the NDP thinks about those comments and, second, how he thinks Canadian families take those comments when they are seeing thousands of dollars returned to their pockets every year.
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Madam Speaker, we are already seeing some of the benefits. I have already spoken to families that are seeing that child care that was once $30-plus a day will be $12 a day come January. We are already seeing that families are looking forward to the benefit of this legislation. It is going to lower their costs. Some families could never have afforded child care before, and that meant that some close friends of mine said they were never going to go back to work until their kids were old enough, because they just could not afford child care.
This law is is going to literally transform so many lives. We have already heard from people, and the fact that the Conservatives are attacking this bill shows they are not committed to ensuring people are able to get back to work and they are not committed to families being able to have access to affordable child care. This shows the Conservatives' values, and their values are not in line with Canadian values and are not in line with the thousands of families that need access to child care. This shows how out of touch they really are.
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Madam Speaker, I find this really interesting, because as I said in my speech, the NDP often advocates for the most vulnerable, which is wonderful, but we have on record Ms. Maggie Moser, who has said in committee that:
The implementation provides undue benefits to higher-income families, who are sailing their yachts on the tides of the program, while those who need it most are left drowning.
Lower-income families were excluded from obtaining access to the CWELCC child care spots. Families who could already afford the fees of their centre were the ones who benefited from the rebates and discounts, while the rest were left behind on a long wait-list.
How does the member reconcile that?
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Madam Speaker, I think it is fair to point out that the program needs to ensure that we are responding to the needs of those who are most vulnerable, and that is something we need to work on. If there are problems with the implementation, those are things we can work on, but we made the commitment to ensuring that families have access to affordable child care. We have a relationship with provinces to make investments to lower the cost of child care and to ensure that when we make those investments, they go toward public and not-for-profit child care spaces. That is the type of work that is needed to ensure that lower-income families are able to access this program.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the leader of the NDP for his inspiring speech. It is true that, in Quebec, early childhood centres and public child care has been accessible for 25 years. This program should help fathers as much as mothers, but because of the inequity in family-related and domestic tasks, this kind of program is more advantageous to mothers.
Economist Pierre Fortin even estimated that, in the first years of the program in Quebec, 70,000 women were able to return to the labour market thanks to these accessible, public and universal child care centres. According to the NDP leader, what are the benefits for families in Ontario, British Columbia and just about everywhere else in Canada?
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Madam Speaker, this will allow the rest of Canada to enjoy what Quebec already has. It is wonderful, and something that we want to share. It is one of the areas where Quebec has been a trailblazer. Lessons can be learned from the way that Quebec implemented this program, which has had an enormous impact on peoples' lives.
My colleague said that it should help fathers too, but that mothers will benefit disproportionately in light of historical inequities. I am glad he raised this positive point. For the time being, we need this program. It will help a lot of families and a lot of mothers. I am proud that we forced the government to introduce this bill. We are going to pass it.
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Madam Speaker, I am honoured to speak in the House in support of a historic piece of legislation, Bill C-35.
I want to begin by acknowledging the hard work of my colleague, the member for Winnipeg Centre, who has worked tirelessly on this bill and who has worked alongside our team to push the Liberals to create a stronger version of this bill on behalf of children, families, Canadian women and all of us.
For me, child care hits close to home. As many of us know, and as my constituents certainly know, I am the proud mother of five-year-old twins. I, like many mothers in Canada, faced real challenges when it came to accessing child care after I had my kids.
I was on a waiting list for child care in Ottawa for over two years, and then, of course, as soon as COVID hit and, knowing that our child care needs had entirely shifted to my constituency here in Manitoba, I was again on a waiting list, and of course, like all families, I faced the insecurities and disruptions caused by the pandemic.
Many who may have tuned into our online sittings throughout that time would have seen one or even both of my children popping up on Zoom during working hours, because that is what it was like to work from home with kids at home without access to child care.
While I treasure the time with my kids, as many mothers know, juggling all of that without access to child care when we want it and when we need it can be a real nightmare.
The reality is that the lack of access to child care in Canada has absolutely held women back and held families back. This legislation is an important step in standing up for women in our country, for families and for a better future for all of our children.
As I begin this speech, I want to say that this victory would not have happened without the decades of activism, of work that has been done by women across our country.
I want to acknowledge the groundbreaking work of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, with leaders like Judy Rebick. I want to acknowledge the many activists involved in the national action committee throughout the country, including people like my mother, Hariklia Dimitrakopoulou-Ashton, who has certainly shaped who I am and who was part of an organization that made it very clear that equality for women and justice for women means child care.
I also want to acknowledge the many women in the labour movement who have tirelessly fought for decades for access to universal, affordable not-for-profit child care. They include leaders like Barb Byers, Vicky Smallman and Bea Bruske, the current CLC president, and her team.
I want to acknowledge women across the country who have made it their aim to speak and fight for child care. In B.C., they are people like Sharon Gregson. Many women here in Manitoba have been part of this fight. Martha Friendly and many more have fought for child care for decades. They and many others are the reason we are standing here today.
I also want to acknowledge a former colleague who is in the news a fair bit right now and who I think many of us hope will soon be the mayor of Toronto, former New Democrat MP Olivia Chow, who, when she was in Parliament, fought tirelessly for child care. She was the first to propose an early learning and child care program for Canadians. Her leadership created the framework for a universal, high-quality, affordable and not-for-profit national child care program.
New Democrats have long called for universal early learning and child care in this country, and it has been a long road to get the other parties on board. I am thinking of long negotiations just to include this in the supply and confidence agreement with the Liberals. Our demands that this be implemented by the end of the year are the reason we are here, and I am proud that due to NDP pressures, we will see this bill adopted before the end of 2023.
Let us look at the figures. Roughly half of Canadian children under six years old do not have access to either licensed or even unlicensed child care. This impacts primarily women, delaying their capacity to return to work at a time of their choosing. Of the women in families that do not have access to child care, 42% end up postponing their return to work.
This is unacceptable. Our current piecemeal system leaves far too many women without the choice to decide for themselves, ourselves, when we can go back to work. Those lost years mean less income for women and fewer opportunities for promotions and furthering careers. It means being punished for starting families.
Every day that we do not have an early learning and child care program in Canada is a day when Canada shows the extent to which it devalues women and how little it wants us to succeed. Let us be clear. The provinces know this. Everyone in the House knows this. We have had commission after commission and report after report. Over half a century ago, the Royal Commission on the Status of Women identified publicly funded universal child care as one of 167 recommendations. For over 30 years, we have heard Liberal promises around child care. It was just around the corner, red book after red book and often heard about during the election, only to have the Liberals complain how hard it was to enact when they got into government.
Far too many women are waiting for far too many men, and some women, to figure out how to treat us with basic dignity and respect. Whether it is our earning power's resembling that of our male counterparts, our capacity to live safely and without fear of violence, equitable abortion access in communities in rural and northern parts of our country, or access to child care, women in Canada are tired of having to prove their basic humanity.
This bill is important, and no one should diminish that. Every parent across Canada deserves access to affordable, accessible, high-quality child care. This bill would enshrine this vision in law and would commit the federal government to long-term funding for provinces and indigenous communities. This bill sets out the vision for a national early learning and child care system and the principles guiding federal investment in that system.
Speaking of funding, we need to be clear. There needs to be long-term, sustainable core funding directed at not-for-profit, accessible and universal child care programs. We need to make sure that ECE workers, who are incredible individuals and amongst the most patient people I know, make a living wage and beyond for the work they do. We need to make sure there is investment in infrastructure. I am thinking of indigenous communities here in our region, with some of the youngest populations in our country, that do not have access to adequate day care spaces. We need to make sure the federal government works with first nations, with Inuit communities and with indigenous communities across the country to make sure adequate child care centres are being built.
It is important to acknowledge that this bill would establish a national advisory council on early learning and child care and set out reporting requirements on the progress being made regarding national child care and the federal investments being made in the system.
Finally, it is meant to contribute toward the realization of the right to child care services, which is recognized in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This bill acknowledges Canada's international obligations under the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and to the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, as well as that a national child care system must respect the rights of indigenous peoples as affirmed by the Constitution Act of 1982.
Today's work in Parliament and the passing of Bill C-35 is nothing short of historic, but we need to make sure that subsequent governments live up to their obligations in this bill and ensure that there is adequate funding to invest in our most prized resource: our children and our future.
I end by thanking those who have come before us: the feminists, the women, the many people who fought for this day to be a reality and who will continue to fight to make sure that children, women, all of us, get the chance and the support that we all deserve.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague and I had our babies around the same time, so I experienced a lot of the same challenges she did, although I had just one, whereas she had two at the same time. I commend her for that.
I really want to thank her for her support of this bill, and I really want to thank her for talking about all the advocates who have come before us, because, really, we stand on their shoulders, and this moment is the result of their hard work. I could not be more appreciative of those advocates who have fought for literally decades to get us to where we are today.
I also want to thank her for speaking accurately about the bill. Unfortunately, when the Conservatives were speaking, they said that there was no reporting requirement. However, as my colleague just mentioned, the bill actually already outlines annual reporting requirements by the government to Parliament, and I am grateful for that.
I am just wondering if she could elaborate on how this is impacting families in her community already and what difference this is going to make for families in Manitoba and across the country.
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Madam Speaker, I want to acknowledge the minister's work on this critical piece of legislation. I know it has been very important for us to work with the minister and make sure the government lives up to the vision that, as the minister pointed out, so many advocates have fought for for years.
We are, absolutely, already seeing positive impacts when it comes to investment in child care. In fact, just a couple of months ago, my neighbour across the street, also the mother of twins, ran over to tell me that her family was one of the ones that were going to be able to get reduced child care fees as a result of our actions in Parliament. I was so proud that this was already making a difference here in Manitoba, in the north, where our child care needs are significant. We are known as being in a child care desert here, given the demands of our communities.
I also want to acknowledge that much work needs to be done when it comes to making sure there is adequate child care in indigenous communities, some of the youngest communities in the country, with a real lack of infrastructure. I am looking forward—
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- Jun/14/23 9:10:04 p.m.
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I have to give another member the opportunity to ask a question.
The hon. member for Peterborough—Kawartha.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. I did not know she had twins. That is a great fact. Sometimes when we are sitting around the House late at night, we learn great facts about our colleagues, and twins are definitely a blessing.
I want to talk about what we did in committee when we were studying this bill. I brought this forward to our leader, and he agreed with me. Conservatives brought forth an amendment to ensure that lower-income families were prioritized and that Bay Street lawyers were not getting priority. It was voted down.
What are her thoughts on that?
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Madam Speaker, if the member had been here during the first two years of my twins' life, she would have seen them in the House as well, prior to Zoom.
For us, in the NDP, what is really important is universal access and that we make sure all families have access to affordable child care no matter where they live. We obviously need to have special recognition of the barriers facing low-income families and women who are facing economic hardship. Today's legislation is an important step in that direction.
We need to make sure there is adequate funding, which also involves making sure ECE workers, many of them also mothers who need child care, have a living wage, and we need to make sure we are making the necessary investments in the program.
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Madam Speaker, I want to touch on the issue of fair wages and working conditions being essential. As we know, part of the challenge we face with child care is the inability to attract and retain child care workers, early childhood education workers, in the sector.
What do we need to do, as government, to support early childhood education workers getting into the sector, and how do we retain them?
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Madam Speaker, clearly, we need to work very closely with early childhood education workers and the sector to make sure fair wages are prioritized. We need to ensure there is dedicated funding for that and that there is oversight of this very important fact. We also need to invest in ECE education and make sure we are attracting and retaining the best. For the people who are already doing this work, we need to make sure we are continuing to invest in—
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