44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 14, 2023 02:00PM
Madam Speaker, I want to say right off the top that I will be splitting my time with the member for Lethbridge.
I note that this has been a long debate and that we are here late at night. I want to note that as well.
I think that this bill is one in which the issues that we are discussing today are being framed in the wrong way. The issues are being framed as what the government is proposing. This is the prerogative of the government, and this is often the challenge that we find ourselves with as the opposition. The government frames the issue, and we as the opposition must then respond. We end up with an issue that is already framed and we end up debating inside that issue.
The government is identifying a problem, and I would generally say that it is narrowcasting the issue. The issue is that Canadian families are struggling, and they are struggling in a whole host of ways, but then that also is borne out in the fact that they cannot afford child care.
That is a narrowcast. One of the band-aid solutions that the government comes up with is to just say that it will pay for the child care situation directly. It will just hand out money to child care operators, and that will reduce the cost of the child care.
That is a solution, but it does not bear on the broader issues that we are seeing in Canadian society. We are seeing that everything in Canada feels broken and that Canadians cannot afford to live their lives right here in Canada.
That is one of the things. The other thing is around the whole idea of family policy. In doing some research on this, I ran across an organization called Cardus and a gentleman named Peter Jon Mitchell, who has written a lot about this idea.
I would like to quote extensively from an article that he wrote called “Canada Needs a Family-Formation Policy Framework”.
He had some very interesting things to say about this. He says:
The promotion of $10-a-day child care as economic policy illustrates the problem with Canadian family policy, which is that we don’t have one. Yes, we have substantial direct cash benefits to parents, generous parental leave, and plenty of funded services. Yet we still lack any coherent strategy for encouraging strong, stable family life. As University of Windsor political scientist Lydia Miljan writes:
“Generally speaking, family policy in Canada may be characterized as an uncoordinated hodgepodge of policies, based on assumptions that are not always clearly recognized or even consistent, and delivered by an assortment of institutions including not only agencies of all three levels of government but also privately-run organizations like provincial Children’s Aid Societies, Big Brothers Big Sisters, family planning clinics, and so on.”
A new Cardus report, Envisioning a Federal Family-Formation Policy Framework for Canada, argues for a clear-eyed vision for Canadian family policy. Canadians value family life, but for complex reasons are partnering and marrying later and having fewer children than they say they would like. While all stages of family life are important, Canada needs to pay [particular] attention to the transition into partnership and marriage, and to having children.
These are Peter's words, not mine.
The federal government is only one actor among state and civil society institutions that can help families. Even as one of the most distant actors from daily family life, by reforming current programs and pursuing innovative policy options, the federal government can increase opportunity for family formation by removing barriers.
The hodgepodge collection of policies affecting families are often directed toward individual family members rather than respecting that families make decisions as a unit. For example, an expressed intent behind national child care is to increase the number of mothers in the workforce, while paternity leave in Quebec is intended to nudge fathers toward a larger share of caregiving. These may be laudable policy objectives, but families make these decisions as a unit, not as individuals. Families are social institutions that form their members, and they act in the collective interest of those members. Individuals negotiate their interests within families, but do so with consideration for the family as a unit.
Individuals negotiate their interests within families, but do so with consideration for the family as a unit.
The tension around the role of the state in intra-family decision-making is most noticeable in how the state directs public policy towards children. Political scientist Jane Jenson and her co-author Caroline Beauvais describe two paradigms for Canadian public policy. The family responsibility paradigm identifies families as the primary authority in determining the well-being of children. Policy approaches under this paradigm maximize flexibility for family decision-making. Direct government involvement is reserved for situations where children’s well-being is in danger. The second model is the investing in children paradigm, focused on early intervention through services that come around children and their families. Parents are important, but the paradigm emphasizes the expertise of state and civil-society actors.
The preferred approach [for most Conservatives] is to empower families as the primary caregiving community around children, with the authority and obligation to ensure the well-being of children. Institutions can best help children by working in partnership with children’s caregivers. In most cases, public policy should maximize flexibility that allows families to make decisions best suited for the family.
That is an extensive quote from this article by Peter Jon Mitchell. It lays out what are probably the major discussion points or the differences that we see between what the Conservatives and everybody else in this place really feels, that the family model is what we need to note.
Even the CBC is noticing this as an issue across the country. A CBC headline coming out of British Columbia, posted in March of last year was, “Young B.C. families are having fewer children, opting out of parenthood as cost of living skyrockets.”
Once again, the bill we are debating today is only tackling one of the many issues that Canadian families are having. This is also having an effect on family formation. Again, what Peter Jon Mitchell was calling for in his article was a strategic and thoughtful family policy rather than a social policy or an economic policy.
It was very interesting to me when the member for Winnipeg North was up on his feet, talking about this bill. He noted that this also happened to be good tax policy in the fact that if we had more people participating in the workforce, there would be more taxes for the government.
This is what we have seen from the Liberal government, over and over again. It comes forward with a policy proposal that it says is one thing, and in reality it is another thing. On his part, the member for Winnipeg North actually said that quiet part out loud when he said that this is actually tax policy, that the government wants Canadians to be able to pay more taxes. It is precisely the opposite of what Conservatives are about.
Conservatives are about making sure that Canadians pay the least amount of taxes possible. Conservatives, particularly on tax policy, say that we have a country to run, what are the things we need to pay for in order to run the country? When we have the list of things we need to pay for, we ask how we are going to pay for them and how are we going to collect taxes.
The Liberals have a completely opposite theory or policy around taxation. Their policy is, how much tax money can we wring out of Canadians, and then where can we spend all this cool tax money that we have collected. That is the fundamental difference between Conservatives and Liberals. I think the member for Winnipeg North kind of said the quiet part out loud when he said that this policy would increase the tax revenue to the federal government.
That seems to me to be the focus of everything that the Liberal government does, it is to increase the tax revenue to the federal government. They also have a carbon tax, which does the same thing. It does not affect the environment at all, but it creates tax revenue for the federal government.
With that, I would like to thank folks for listening tonight, and look forward to questions and comments.
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Madam Speaker, as always, it is a tremendous honour and privilege to stand in this place and to have the opportunity to speak on behalf of the constituents of Lethbridge, whom I represent. Tonight, I have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-35, which has to do with universal child care.
I think what we will discover in this conversation tonight is that, actually, it is not universal, even though we like to use that term; I will get to that in just a moment. However, I would like to point out that, as a member of His Majesty's loyal opposition, it is in fact my job in this place to talk about the legislation that is before the House in such a way that I highlight, yes, some of the good but, more importantly, the opportunities to make it even better. I will be doing that tonight.
Some in my riding have expressed support for this legislation. Others have no support for it and have been very opposed. Still others fall somewhere in the middle; they like parts of it, but they see flaws in other components.
To be clear, in many ways, Bill C-35 is not actually a child care strategy, which is what the Liberal government would like it to come off as. Rather, it is more of a marketing plan. It is something that these Liberals use over and over again in their talking points, but when we actually ask them for substantiated evidence of a program that has been rolled out with great productivity and provision for Canadians, they are not able to actually show us that. This is problematic, because it is over-promising and under-delivering. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it is Canadians who suffer.
I would like members to imagine that they are taken on an all-expense-paid shopping trip. I believe this is most women's dream. They are told that they can look through all the shop windows and have anything they wish. They arrive on Fifth Avenue in New York City and get to work. They look around, and a shop window attracts the attention of an individual. She walks over to the store and tries the door, only to find that the shop is closed. She takes another look around and finds another shop window that has another outfit she thinks is quite nice; she goes to the shop door and tries to open it, but it is closed. This poor woman repeats this over and over again, only to find that the stores are all closed. The promise was great and exciting, but it did not deliver. This is exactly what the Liberals have presented us with: a promise without a premise. A promise without a premise is absolutely worthless, which is what so many Canadians are facing with the bill before us.
The reality is that affordable, quality child care is critical, if we can find it. It is needed for many families in this country; there is no doubt about that. Many families need to have two individuals working, and many are single parents who need to work. In these cases, they would need child care of some sort. Now, the problem with the bill is that it actually dictates where that child care needs to be found. It cannot be a family member, a neighbour or friend. It has to be a state-run or non-profit day care, which is a problem, because—
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- Jun/14/23 11:31:30 p.m.
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Order. I think somebody forgot to shut their mike off a while ago. It is taken off now.
The hon. member for Lethbridge.
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