44th Parl. 1st Sess.
January 31, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I am a little surprised to hear the official opposition questioning so many things when the Quebec system, which has been in place for 25 years, works. It also works well in the fight against poverty. I am receptive to my colleague's argument that it is those who already have money who will benefit. However, that is not what we have seen in Quebec.
Here is a statistic: The number of single-parent families on welfare dropped by 64% from the year the child care system was created to 2016. That is also because more women had jobs. Child care in Quebec was not built overnight. We began by laying the foundation and then continued to build up services, which are delivering results in the fight against poverty.
I would like to know what my colleague thinks about that.
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Mr. Speaker, as I listened to my colleague's speech, I would see that he certainly understands all the benefits of affordable educational child care.
However, in the previous version of the bill, Quebec's exemption was right there in black and white. After all, Quebec is a success story. I would like to know why that was not included in this bill. If it were clearly stated that Quebec could opt out with appropriate financial compensation, I think another Quebec-Canada fight could be avoided.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my enthusiastic colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue.
Yesterday, my colleagues from Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou and Laurentides—Labelle spoke to Bill C‑35. Today, I will be delivering a somewhat complementary speech, and I want to reiterate that the Bloc Québécois is voting in favour of this bill.
In 2022, Quebec marked the 25th anniversary of its family policy, which ushered in an integrated family allowance and a parental insurance plan and provided for the development of affordable educational and day care services. This is just one more development for Quebec society that confirms the distinct and unique nature of our nation. The objective of this progressive plan was to ensure equity through universal support for families and increased financial assistance to the most vulnerable families, to make it easier for parents to achieve work-life balance, and to promote child development and equal opportunity.
The architecture of the child care system and its success stories have been commended by many experts in education and in public policy development around the world. The OECD described Quebec's system as “one of the most ambitious and interesting early education and care policies in North America” and added that “none of [the] provinces showed the same clarity of vision as Quebec in addressing the needs of young children and families”.
Others have made similar comments. We have been hearing them for more than 20 years. Quebec is most definitely and without question a distinct society, and its child care program is another example of what makes it different. Naturally, the Bloc Québécois is pleased that the federal government is adopting our model 25 years after it was implemented. It is noteworthy that other countries, such as Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Australia, adopted it as a model before the federal government did.
I also want to talk about the introduction of early childhood centres, or CPEs, and what they helped Quebec women accomplish, as well as their role in poverty reduction.
Quebec is second in the world for the best integration of women into the labour force. The Research Chair in Taxation and Public Finance of the Université de Sherbrooke compiled the OECD data, and the employment gap between men and women aged 25 to 54 in Quebec is the smallest of the 32 OECD countries. For 2019, the employment rate for women 25 to 54 was 83.4% whereas for men in the same age range it was 86.8%. In Quebec, the gap is therefore 3.4 percentage points. In comparison, the average gap in OECD countries is 17.1 percentage points, or five times greater than the gap in Quebec.
The employment rate among Quebec women rose from 65.5% in 1996 to 83.4% in 2019. Only Sweden performed slightly better, and only by half a percentage point. In practical terms, this means that women were able to take up positions related to their training or even advance to positions that otherwise would have been out of reach without the child care system. In single-parent families, women were able to enter the workforce without fear of “breaking the bank”, as we say back home. More generally, women could actually see themselves having better work-life balance, pursuing graduate studies, and so on.
Now I want to talk about poverty. In 2023, providing affordable child care services in a public system is also a very effective way to fight poverty, and everyone wins. After child care services were introduced in Quebec, the number of single-parent families on social assistance dropped by 64% between 1997, the year the system was set up, and 2016. With more women in the workforce, more income and consumption taxes are paid, so the system helps finance itself, to some extent.
This bill will help move Canadian provinces toward true work-life balance. With more than 1.8 million single-parent families in Canada, it is not surprising that the Canadian Chamber of Commerce believes that the number one barrier to career advancement or a career change, whether chosen or imposed, is the lack of affordable child care. This was examined in an article in The Globe and Mail last spring.
We need to tell it like it is. Do not forget that women still tend to be responsible for the children, for the household. There has been some progress since I had children, but more needs to be done.
In this case, the statistics are clear. Current child care costs are so high that one parent's take-home pay, often the mother's, is almost entirely allocated to child care. That does not make sense. On average, fees seem to be $1,600 per month in Ontario, according to recent research done for 2022. This reality impacts mothers, as well as the availability of labour and everything else that revolves around that, including the local economy, personal growth, professional growth, tax revenue for the government, the socialization of children and much more.
Quebec, an authority known the world over as a forward-thinking pioneer in family policy, will not participate in the federal program and will receive full financial compensation. The opposite would certainly have been unacceptable. However, we want to see it written in black and white: Quebec can fully withdraw from this program with compensation. This would prevent a potential fight between Quebec and Canada.
One caveat though: although Quebec is way ahead of the Canadian provinces, when it comes to setting up such a major program, they should be wary of some of the choices made by Quebec governments that came after the progressive Parti Québécois because some of those governments were not quite so progressive.
Bloomberg recently published two articles on Quebec's early childhood centres. The title of the first, dated December 31, 2018, is “Affordable Daycare and Working Moms: the Quebec Model”. It analyzes the reality of the hybrid child care system and delves into why the provinces should guard against allowing the private for-profit sector to play too great a part.
Here is a quote from the article: “Unfortunately, the private for-profit non-subsidized sector has not been as good for child development. The parents/users who are in this part of the system, the private, non-subsidized sector of the program, have on average low-quality care, as opposed to the subsidized centres, which have a very high level of quality.”
That is what Bloomberg found in its research. The economist who made that statement was echoing the sense of unfinished business expressed by Pauline Marois, who headed up the initiative during her time as education minister.
The second article, published in April 2021, is entitled “Lessons from Quebec on Universal Child Care”.
His analysis involves the exceptional maintenance of public child care services in Quebec during the pandemic. He warns us about the market-based model used in the rest of Canada and the United States, even with the various tax arrangements.
Allow me to paraphrase: Even in the best of times, advocates of this market-based approach consider it a tenuous business model for child care, which requires heavy staffing to meet even basic safety requirements, and the children lose out as well. I think we should be aware of this, because quality child care is an “intangible good”. Its quality is more difficult to assess, so market-driven programs compete on cost rather than quality.
I will end with this. Earlier, I mentioned Pauline Marois. The family policy developed while she was the minister of education under a Parti Québécois government is decidedly the policy that changed everything for millions of women and families in Quebec. It was nothing less than a revolution for women with families. I am certain that several generations of Quebeckers recognize this. It is an exceptional political legacy. I heartily thank Ms. Marois.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague, who is the chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. I am a member of this committee.
He is absolutely correct. I totally agree with him. To borrow a well-known saying, Rome was not built in a day.
Implementing a major policy takes time. It cannot be done overnight. Major policies take time, and we need to take the first steps. We need to lay the cornerstone, otherwise there will be no building.
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Mr. Speaker, it is true that there are problems. It is not all perfect. After the Parti Québécois and Pauline Marois put the system in place, successive governments did not always do the right thing, so to speak. Those governments were not as progressive. We need to be careful of that.
That is exactly what the Bloomberg analysis says. We need to implement a system that is sustainable and improved from year to year.
I heard many speeches by my opposition colleagues. They talked about a lack of staff. It is true that there are staffing shortages everywhere, so I am going to suggest a solution that will attract workers, and that is unionization. If child care workers are unionized, then we will not have so-called cheap labour.
According to what I have read, the wages of non-unionized workers tend to be much lower, often close to or just over the provincial minimum wage.
If we want to attract workers, then we need to think about giving them decent working conditions and wages. I would like to remind the House that 98% or 99% of child care workers are women.
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Mr. Speaker, sometimes, the NDP members make it sound like they deserve the credit for everything.
Quebec's child care system has been in place for 25 years. The problem is not the system itself, but accessing it.
As I said earlier, there are some political parties that followed the example of the Parti Québécois, which was very progressive, and others that did not do what the creator of the day care system, Pauline Marois, would have wanted.
The decisions that negatively impacted the system are not those of the most recent government, but those of previous governments and a certain Liberal Party.
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Mr. Speaker, I would have a hard time giving the federal government advice on how to do more in an area of provincial jurisdiction. I will not be giving any advice.
The advice I can give to everyone would be to promote unionization in the provinces. A unionized workplace has a higher rate of staff retention and workplace satisfaction. What is more, it offers better salaries, better social benefits and better workplace practices. Under those circumstances people are more motivated to work.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague with whom I am very pleased to work on the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.
An economic downturn is looming. However, many scientific studies have shown that a market-based approach does not work for child care services.
I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on that. Why does she think that some members are opposed to affordable government-funded child care services?
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