44th Parl. 1st Sess.
January 30, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, I wish everyone a happy new year. It is nice to be back.
It was wonderful to hear so many positive stories, and that is great, but it is not the reality of all the other parents who cannot access child care. How many of those families has the minister spoken to? What are the answers she is giving those families that have been on wait-lists for years, those who cannot go back to work because they cannot access affordable, quality child care?
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Madam Speaker, the legislation sets out a vision for a Canada-wide system in which all families have access to high quality, affordable and inclusive early learning and child care, or ELCC, no matter where they live in Canada. Are there are any challenges to meeting this goal, and if so, how is our government meeting that challenge?
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- Jan/30/23 12:53:29 p.m.
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I am sorry. The time is up.
Questions and comments, the hon. Minister of Families, Children and Social Development.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for her speech because she has pointed out exactly why this bill is important. All of the issues she raised are issues that have arisen because we did not have national leadership on child care. There was no system before. The system that was there was a patchwork, and it did not provide for the needs of families across this country. Wait-lists existed before and exist today. That is why we are committed to creating 250,000 new spaces. There was no affordability. If the Conservatives truly care about these issues, this is an opportunity for them to join us in supporting this bill.
Can we count on the hon. minister's support to improve this for families across Canada?
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Madam Speaker, the member really hit the nail on the head when she asked how we can create more spaces if we do not have the labour force to back that up. I hear that in rural Canada in my riding, where mothers and parents are waiting on lists for years to find child care. However, the bill does not address the shortage of child care in rural Canada.
I wonder if my colleague could comment on what kind of strategy the Conservatives would have to help families that are in need of child care across this country, especially in the rural areas of Canada.
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Madam Speaker, this will indeed help women return to the workforce, and it will help families support them. We know that child care is very expensive. This service will be a huge help to families, and it will also support early childhood education.
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Madam Speaker, one of the trends we are seeing, which has really been accelerated by the pandemic, is flexible work. People are working from home and looking to be able to combine family life with work in different ways. Therefore, they are still very much needing child care, but they are looking for more creative options, which may be in their neighbourhood, may be at odd hours and may reflect the particulars of their work situation.
One of the concerns I have with the government's one-size-fits-all approach to child care is that it would fund a particular kind of child care model that is not consistent with the way many families live. As technology changes, the government's program is not keeping up with this evolution and how people are trying to combine work with family life. I wonder if the member could talk about whether she agrees that the government's approach is failing to be flexible to accommodate all families with the way the program is structured.
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- Jan/30/23 2:42:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, right after we formed the government, 450,000 fewer children were in poverty than when the Conservatives were in power. It is because of our programs, such as the Canada child benefit or the child care and early childhood program, that fees have dropped by 50% across the country.
Families across Canada tell me how much these programs have helped them reduce the cost of living and how this is changing their lives. It is a shame that the Conservatives do not support these measures.
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Madam Speaker, I am happy we are talking about this today. My own experience as a single parent is that I was working at a minimum wage trying to make ends meet and still, despite provincial subsidies, was unable to afford child care. My daughter is turning 20 on February 2 and my son is 15. This has been going on for generations and so many families are impacted by unaffordable and inaccessible child care.
We can celebrate that this is moving in the right direction, but we also need to look at why it has taken so many generations for us to get to where we are today and to finally be implementing child care.
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Madam Speaker, the simple answer to my colleague is political will. That was the question I asked my colleagues in Quebec when I went to see 25 years of care. I asked, “How did you get it?” They said it was the political will and women. Women had been demanding this for over 50 years. We are here to tell them and to tell educators, families and children that it has arrived and it will continue.
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Madam Speaker, he said so many things in such a short amount of time that it will be difficult to answer all of his questions. More importantly, my colleague just said some things that are far from true.
It is true that when the child care system was put in place, I was against it. At the time, I was working as a young politician and I had some serious questions. I would like to remind my colleague that my wife works in the child care system, so I have learned to appreciate its merits since then. I have learned how useful a child care system can be for children and how it can help them as they move into the school system.
I think that children deserve access to child care, and my colleagues agree. Women and families deserve to have access to quality child care that will help them move forward and put them on the right path for the rest of their lives.
However, people need to be able to access the system if they so choose. That is the main problem in Canada right now. This has even been a problem in Quebec over the past 25 years.
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Madam Speaker, every parent should have access to quality, affordable child care when they need it.
The Liberals promised national child care almost 30 years ago, and for decades families have been struggling to afford child care, struggling to find child care and sometimes paying more than their rent or mortgage to ensure their kids are taken care of. I am so glad to see both the current funding commitments and this legislation for the future.
With the federal financial commitments, B.C. has been investing in reducing costs, creating more spaces and recruiting more early childhood educators. That is my home province. The member is from Manitoba, and Manitoba is the only province that has not seen an average reduction in child care fees.
I am curious if the member agrees that we need to see stronger accountability measures so that we actually guarantee that families are going to see a reduction in costs.
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Mr. Speaker, the member was talking about discrimination against women, and I found myself reflecting on what really does discriminate against women.
We know that what discriminates against women is not having access to public and non-profit child care that provides affordable, high-quality and accessible day care for families who need it, not day care that makes profit off the backs of parents. We also know that public and non-profit child care provides better wages and working conditions for staff, who are predominantly women.
The member is clearly very much in support of child care. How can the member justify throwing away a bill that would provide national, accessible, affordable child care for families as being in the best of interests of anybody?
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Mr. Speaker, for young families across this country, child care is a principle concern. When a child is in their care or with another, parents want to feel confident that their child is being well cared for, and that they are safe and in a healthy environment that supports their development.
Canadian families across the country should have access to affordable and quality child care. Parents should also be able to choose a child care solution that best suits them and works with their family's own unique needs. The reality is there is no one-size-fits-all child care solution.
Not only is the issue of child care important for families, but it is also a significant consideration in workforce participation. Access to child care continues to be a large barrier to workforce participation, and it cannot be overlooked as we look into addressing the labour shortages we are experiencing across industries in this country.
While there is presumably a consensus on the viewpoint that there should be accessible, affordable and flexible child care for parents throughout our country, this legislation offers no real assurances to Canadian families that there will be. The families that will benefit from this legislation are those families who have already secured a child care space in a public or not-for-profit program.
However, this legislation does nothing to help the thousands of families on child care wait-lists and those whose child care needs require more flexibility. It does nothing to help those families whose child care needs fall outside the standard hours of operation. In fact, the primary problem with this legislation is that it fails to ensure that demand can be met and that supports are flexible enough to meet the needs of all Canadian families.
Affordable, quality child care is a great concept. It is a wonderful concept, but if a parent cannot access it, then it is ultimately worthless. In laying out a vision for a Canada-wide, early learning and child care system, Bill C-35 offers Canadian families a single, just one, child care solution, and by its own design, the access is limited.
This legislation intentionally ignores an entire section of the child care landscape, which is critical to meeting demand. The Liberal-NDP government is shutting private operators, who tend to be women-owned small businesses, out of its plan. It fails to even ensure them a seat at the table.
There is no representation for these women-owned small businesses in the makeup of the proposed national advisory council on early learning and child care. In addition to public child care programs, these women-owned small business operators are critical to meeting the growing demand for child care spaces, not to mention that, by limiting supports to public and not-for-profit child care programs, this will drive up the demand for child care spaces in these programs where the wait-lists already exist.
We know that wait-lists already exist because there is not necessarily the staff or infrastructure put in place to offer more child care spaces. This legislation does not solve the issue of recruitment or that of retention in the early learning and child care sector. It does not answer the pressing question of who will staff these programs.
Report after report indicates that early childhood educators are overwhelmed and burnt out, and that there is a steady stream of early childhood educators leaving the profession. There have been operators who have had to close their doors at times because there was not necessarily enough staff to operate.
To ensure that the government is delivering more than just announcements to Canadians, the government needs to deliver a tangible plan, in partnership with our provinces, to recruit and retain labour. That plan should engage all child care providers.
With limited resources, it does not make sense to shut out these women-owned small businesses from this solution, nor should the government be putting these entrepreneurs at a disadvantage. These child care providers should be able to operate in a fair market.
Without a real plan to address the existing challenges in child care, access to child care will never really be achieved. If the goal is truly to deliver universal access to child care, child care policy also needs to be comprehensive.
However, the government's vision for child care policy is limited. For one, it fails to acknowledge that not all parents have a standard work schedule. The reality is that standard child care operating hours do not meet the needs of most shift workers. Parents who work early mornings, evenings, nights, weekends, statutory holidays, casual shifts or any other irregular shifts are largely being left behind. By focusing child care supports on programs that do not offer any real kind of child care solution to families with non-standard work schedules, there is a massive gap in the NDP-Liberal government's child care policy. It is not a universal solution.
The NDP-Liberal government also purports to be addressing affordability through the creation of a $10-a-day child care program, but that is not entirely accurate either. As I have mentioned, the only families who are benefiting from the cuts to child care costs are those who already have child care spaces in eligible public and not-for-profit programs.
We are now hearing reports of operators who are struggling with the skyrocketing cost of living in the country. These operators, like all Canadians, are seeing the cost of everything climb. Many who offer food programs are now having to consider whether they are going to cut these programs entirely or charge parents additional costs to keep them running.
Either these parents are getting fewer services from their child care providers or some of those savings will ultimately be lost. Of course, for those parents who cannot access a child care space, they are not benefiting from these savings, but are still struggling under the pressures of the rising costs.
In fact, I was listening to the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development's speech earlier in the debate today. She highlighted that she had heard from parents who could now afford their mortgage payment because their child care fees were reduced and other parents who could afford groceries for their family because of the reduction in child care fees. Well, she was quite proud of that achievement, and it really points to a bigger problem, a problem that is her own government's doing. Canadians are paying the price for this costly coalition's tax-and-spend agenda. The NDP-Liberal government needs to take affordability seriously.
Canada's food price report has reported that the average family of four is expected to spend $1000 more than it did last year on groceries. Meanwhile, surveys are already reporting that 52% of Canadian families are concerned that they do not have enough money to feed their families. We are now seeing record usage of food banks across the country.
The cost of basic necessities is becoming out of reach for more and more Canadians, and the Liberal government's addition of half a trillion dollars in federal debt has led to the 40-year-high inflation rates that we are seeing now. Its continued deficit spending is fuelling inflation and Canadians are paying more in taxes than ever before.
We know that parents are stretching their dollars as far as they can go, but that is becoming less and less fruitful. Those parents who are shut out of the child care program because they cannot access it or because it does not meet their needs do not share the minister's elation.
The driving force behind the skyrocketing cost of living crisis needs to be addressed to really help Canadian families who are struggling to make ends meet and, ultimately, if we want to help Canadian families with the cost of child care, we need to ensure that child care is first available. Child care is unique to each family, and a federal child care policy should reflect that.
Bill C-35 is a flawed piece of legislation. Its approach to child care is narrow and it does not provide Canadian families the assurances that their child care needs would be met. I hope that the NDP-Liberal government is prepared to make some amendments and listen to this—
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