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House Hansard - 149

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
January 30, 2023 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 149 - Jan/30/23
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux
  • Jan/30/23 5:18:53 p.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-35 
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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Context: House Hansard - 149 - Jan/30/23
Mrs. Anna Roberts (King—Vaughan, CPC)
  • Jan/30/23 5:25:08 p.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-35 
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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