44th Parl. 1st Sess.
January 31, 2023 10:00AM
- Jan/31/23 10:19:21 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition highlights the plight of Falun Gong practitioners in China and the human rights abuses they face. This persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China has now been going on for decades.
The petitioners note a number of actions that could be taken, including measures to combat forced organ harvesting and trafficking. The House passed legislation on that already at the end of last year. However, the petitioners want to see continuing action by the House and by the government responding to the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and to continue to hold those responsible for that persecution accountable.
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- Jan/31/23 10:20:06 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the final petition I am tabling today highlights the conflict that occurred in Ethiopia. The petition was submitted prior to the signing of the latest peace deal.
The petitioners want to see the Canadian Parliament and the government remain seized with those ongoing challenges. No doubt, they hope for the effective implementation of a peace deal that allows people to live together in peace and harmony, as well as to provide support and amelioration of circumstances for those who were suffering as a result of the violence that occurred during that conflict.
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- Jan/31/23 10:21:44 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would ask that all questions be allowed to stand at this time.
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- Jan/31/23 10:22:02 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to designate Thursday, February 2, 2023, as an opposition day.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise on behalf of the residents of Kelowna—Lake Country.
Just as a reminder, I am splitting my time with the member for Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek.
I will lay out some of the issues with the Liberal child care bill, Bill C-35, that will need to be addressed.
I thank those who work in the child care system and who look after our children.
To be clear, this is not a child care strategy. In my province of British Columbia, a 2019 survey found that the greater Vancouver area, represented by several cabinet ministers in the Liberal government, had only enough child care spaces for 18.6% of children in the metro region. That is bad enough in urban areas of our country, but in many rural regions of Canada large child care centres do not exist at all. This bill offers rural parents or those who need flexibility nothing. Again, it chooses to ignore the simple fact that low-cost child care is not possible if child care resources are not accessible to begin with.
However, the rural-urban divide is not the only issue with this legislation. There is a serious concern about the complete lack of focus on ensuring that child care spaces go to those most in need instead of creating advantages for the already well off. After all, affordable child care should be prioritized for those who otherwise cannot afford it.
There is no means test. Under the current Liberal proposal, someone who works on Bay Street with children already in day care will get access to $10-a-day child care the same as a lower-income family. People who do not need to work have the same access as a family who needs to work.
There is no flexibility for families who are not working the weekday office job hours and who currently have different types of child care options that work for their shift work or their schedules. That is because this legislation dogmatically preferences not-for-profit and government child care over operators working and running child care centres in the private sector. These are people, most often women, who work in their homes, who have small businesses and who often have young children.
When my son was a baby I found someone to come into my home part time. That was back when maternity leave was only six months, and it was hard to work with such a young baby. Having someone come in was expensive, and I was not making a lot at the time. However, it was the only option I had at the time as few child care centres took infants that young or would allow me flexibility with part-time needs and hours. Christina became like family.
Anyone who has this type of scenario would not be applicable in this legislation. When my son was a toddler he was in the home of a wonderful woman, Pauline, who had a group of kids. Because I needed flexibility in child care due to the type of contract work I was doing at the time, the larger, structured child care centres did not work for what I needed.
The scenario of in-home small business child care does not meet the priorities of the government's legislation. Instead of giving parents freedom to determine what child care works best for their children and their lives, the government has opened the door for a two-tiered framework of child care. Under the government's plan, only not-for-profit and government child care spaces have open access for parents to utilize the Liberals' program as the legislation states is the priority. That is not universal access and the legislation does not include strategies to address spaces or labour.
We know there are labour shortages. About a year ago, in Kelowna, it was announced by one centre that they had to say goodbye to about 24 children, because they could not find the staff to meet the government licensing requirements. That left families scrambling with little ability to find a new location with waiting lists being long.
A Vancouver operator of 300 spaces said, “In the past two years, we've had to close programs temporarily, whether it's for a day or two, or shorten hours for a week”. A report on child care recruitment published in January 2023 found that in British Columbia, 45% of child care centres are losing more staff than they can hire, and 27% of child care employers turned away children because of a lack of qualified staff.
To adequately staff the Liberals' proposed plan in British Columbia, they found that 12,000 new child care employees were required. Still, current recruitment and retention programs are failing with several thousand employees behind target.
When the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development put this bill forward, she said its purpose was to enshrine the Liberals' record on children and family into law. However, their record on this file is something that they are not strong champions of. Canada was once ranked 10th among the OECD for the well-being of children, but under the present government, Canada has fallen sharply to 30th place.
We will work on this side of the House to try to make this legislation better and more accessible to parents who want and deserve the freedom to decide what kind of child care works for their family. Looking beyond this, a future Conservative government will work hard on ways to increase child care workers and spaces and to ensure there are stable, good-paying jobs for families to keep more of the money they earn in their pockets.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to greet all my colleagues who are here this morning.
I ask the hon. member from British Columbia this: Would she not agree that it is a seminal moment in policy and for Canadian families and children that a national early learning and day care agreement has been put in place? Would she not agree that families from coast to coast to coast, including in Kelowna, are saving literally thousands of dollars today on day care fees, which is helping out with affordability and giving children the best start they can receive in their lives and for their futures?
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Mr. Speaker, absolutely, there are some people who are able to access this, but it is not universal, and the government is hand-picking the exact types of formats that will work for this. There are many families who do not fit within that traditional format of putting their children in a not-for-profit or government-run facility. There are many people who have their children in smaller locations, such as in families' homes, and all of this is left out. Therefore, it really does not allow for flexibility and freedom, and it is actually likely going to gridlock the current systems that exist right now in the not-for-profit and government systems.
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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, sure, there have been results, but the reality is that in Quebec the program has existed for over 20 years. As of right now, there are over 50,000 children on waiting lists to get into child care.
It has seen some results, but there is still a lot of work that it obviously needs to do because it does not have complete universal child care, and not everyone who needs a child care space has it in Quebec.
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Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise in the House given the support that we in the NDP have given to this important legislation.
We know that work needs to be done to improve it, but it is really hard to take anybody from the Conservative Party seriously who is critical of moving forward toward universal, affordable child care. It is a party that, when it was in government, waged a war on women. It cut the status of women department, cut programming when it came to women, refused to implement an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, and did nothing to advance the desperate need for child care that women face in our country.
This legislation is critical to lifting Canadian women up. Despite the rhetoric from the Conservative leadership, let it be known to Canadians today that the Conservatives do not want to lift Canadian women up and ensure that there is affordable, accessible child care in our country for all of us.
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Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member finally came back to referring to what the legislation is. The member mentioned universal child care. This is not universal child care. The government is hand-picking the types of organizations that are applicable for this. That was the whole premise of my speech, and I would ask the member to go back and listen to my intervention again.
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Mr. Speaker, in the speech the member just gave, she criticized this legislation for not being means-tested. I would remind her that when she ran in the last election under the leader from Durham, the Conservatives' plan was to get rid of this universal child care and replace it with a tax credit. A tax credit would be the least available option if one were looking to means-test a program. Can she somehow explain to the House how it is she ran on a tax credit, which by no means would provide a means test, and is now suddenly critical of that specifically?
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Mr. Speaker, in Canada if we had not had hundreds of thousands of people laid off in the resource sector who had very good-paying jobs, if we did not have 40-year inflation where people can barely buy food and groceries, maybe it would not be such an issue that they would not be able to afford their basic necessities and not be able to afford child care.
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Mr. Speaker, if a couple, Fred and Martha let us say, living near Hoadley, Alberta in a rural area, have incomes that are close to or just above minimum wage, would they get the pleasure and privilege of paying for day care for millionaires in downtown Toronto or downtown Montreal while their taxes are not going to provide any benefit because there will be no government-sanctioned day care spaces in a community that only has a couple of hundred people?
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Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that the government does not have any money. The government takes money from its citizens and then gives it back, and so the scenario is in fact playing out as the member has said. The government is hand-picking who it is giving the money back to. In fact that person maybe does not have access to a lot of child care facilities where they live in a rural area. Absolutely, because the government is hand-picking who it is going to be giving this money back to.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this place and contribute to the debate on Bill C-35, an act respecting early learning and child care in Canada.
As a mom and a grandmother of 11, I understand the importance of having access to quality child care, and I join my colleagues in recognizing those who work in this sector and the very important work they do, and I thank them for it.
With all of the fanfare that this two-to-three-decade plan in the making to nationalize child care has been given, this bill falls flat when it comes to providing a solution for the issues that currently face families who need these programs. As part of their confidence and supply agreement that sees the New Democrats support the minority government through to 2025, the Liberals promised to introduce this legislation by the end of 2022.
With that deadline fast approaching, the Liberals introduced this bill last December. While the bill sets out to establish a vision for a Canada-wide community-based early learning and child care system, it lacks substance in charting a path to get there. Not only does it not address the problems that already exist, but it creates even more.
In declaring their goal to support the establishment and maintenance of a Canada-wide early learning and child care system, where families have access to affordable, inclusive and high-quality early learning and child care programs and services, regardless of where they live, the Liberals have included one proviso that has many families and child care providers concerned.
That condition is found in paragraph 7(1)(a), to "facilitate access to early learning and child care programs and services—in particular those that are provided by public and not for profit child care providers”.
To start, it favours or gives preferential treatment to public and not-for-profit providers over any other type of child care program that exists. Only public, non-profit child care spaces have open access for parents to utilize the supports of this program. If a family chose a new, privately owned centre or one that has recently expanded to meet the demand, it cannot access the subsidy it needs at that centre, therefore limiting the child's ability to access quality child care.
Families are diverse and so, too, are their circumstances. The federal government should not be dictating what child care is best for families. Conservatives recognize that Canadian families should have access to affordable and quality child care and believe they should be able to choose child care providers who best suit their families' needs.
Second, this bill does nothing to address the wait-lists of thousands of families needing child care. For example, the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario projects that, by 2026, there will be 602,000 children under six whose families will want $10-a-day care and the province will only be able to accommodate 375,000 of them, leaving 227,000, or 38% of those children, without access.
Third, it does not address the concerns of operators who do not have the staff or infrastructure to offer more spaces. Currently there are not enough qualified staff to keep all existing child care centres running at full capacity, let alone staff new spaces. Government estimates also suggest that, by 2026, there could be a shortage of 8,500 early childhood workers.
In British Columbia, 27% of child care centres turn away children due to lack of staff. One child care director who oversees 13 child care programs with 350 spaces says that, “In the past two years, we’ve had to close programs temporarily, whether it’s for a day or two, or shorten hours for the week…in order to meet the licensing regulations”.
There are also concerns of inflation increasing operating costs. Many child care centres that offer food programs are now considering seriously cutting back on the programs or eliminating them all together.
The cost of inflation is putting pressure on child care centres, and they need to lower costs because the funding they are receiving is not reflecting the drastic rise of inflation. They are now faced with cutting down costs in drastic ways.
In a Globe and Mail article, an owner of a child care centre in Calgary stated, “If we've got to start jettisoning expenses...do we start cutting back on our food program, or even eliminate it in its entirety over time?” Once again, the Liberal government is not taking into account the inflation crisis it has fuelled when implementing new policies.
While we would see the demand for child care increase as a result of this bill, it would not solve the problems of lack of access to more spaces, frontline burnout, staff shortages and rising costs. Affordable, quality child care is critical, but if people cannot access it, it does not exist, as I have already stated. Bill C-35 would do nothing to address accessibility.
In the time that I have left, I want to focus on the clause that will create a national advisory council, which has already been appointed. Clause 9 states, “A Council is established, to be known as the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care, consisting of no fewer than 10 but no more than 18 members, including the Chairperson and the ex officio member.” That ex officio member would be the deputy minister.
The chairperson, and up to 18 members, would be appointed by the minister for three-year terms. The members of this council would, of course, be paid with the remuneration to be set by the Governor in Council. These members would be entitled to reimbursements for travel, living and other expenses incurred for their work on the council, including the deputy minister.
They would also be deemed to be employees for the purpose of the Government Employees Compensation Act, and to be employed in the federal public administration.
Here is the thing. While this bill appears to put a focus on respecting and valuing the diversity of all children and families, and respond to their varying needs, the national council would have zero representation of entrepreneurial providers at the table.
In provinces like Alberta and New Brunswick, the majority of stakeholders are private, and there are a large number of them, in fact. It is 67% for Alberta and 80% for New Brunswick. There would be no one who will bring to the table the views of those female entrepreneurs who have stepped up and made investments to meet the need for child care in this country.
The government is not taking into account the realities of families who have access only to private child care providers. The national advisory council should have representation for the different options of child care offered across this country. Canadians need a solution that is flexible enough to fit their varying needs, not an Ottawa-centric, one-size-fits-all solution. That starts with representation on the national council for entrepreneurial child care providers.
In conclusion, I find that this bill is superfluous to the child care issue. It would do little but create a council of bureaucrats with full benefits and compensation to dictate to Canadians the Liberals' view of what the provision of child care should be across this country. This bill needs to be amended, and many of my colleagues have already noted that. It is flawed, narrow in its approach and does not address the issues facing this sector and the families who desperately need it.
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Mr. Speaker, it is great to be back and I welcome all my colleagues back to the House of Commons.
Over the course of the break, I had lots of time to knock on doors. I talked to lots of my neighbours. Milton is one of the youngest communities in Canada demographically, so I overwhelmingly heard from my constituents that they were thrilled about the amount of money they were saving every month on child care.
While the Conservatives ran on a promise to tear up those agreements and remove national child care from my community, it would be devastating for my community. They have been talking a lot about affordability, but the $450, $500 or $600 a month that my constituents are saving on child care fees is really supporting them.
What is the Conservative plan to support families and their young children in those early years?
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Mr. Speaker, I too have communities in my riding that have very young demographics, and they do not have access to the kind of child care the current government is proposing to fund exclusively.
At a time when families are struggling, when they are already worried about how they are going to pay for their mortgage, feed their families or heat their homes, they should not have to worry about access to child care, which many already are, because this bill does nothing to improve access for people who do not have it right now.
Bill C-35 is providing Canadian families with a single solution to which access is limited. It is critical that we open up not only this debate but our minds to the reality that we need those small, privately owned child care spaces, most of which are operated by women, to meet the demand of young families.
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Mr. Speaker, I would just like to begin by wishing you a happy new year.
In response to my colleague's speech, I think it is important to emphasize that child care is not just a business. It is not just about tax credits. It is also a place where children learn.
I would like my colleague to tell us more about the provinces' role and that of indigenous peoples in delivering early learning programs and services. Is that not a priority? What kind of conditions do we want to create for our children?
This is not just about giving them four walls and a safe place to be. We also have to think about their development, and that means creating a robust public system.
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Mr. Speaker, I will try to speak to the first issue the member raised around provincial jurisdiction. We know that while this bill does not make financial promises, the government has already signed framework agreements with all the provinces, and indeed it has cited the framework agreements as a reason for why it has not put very much detail in this bill.
We know that if the goal is really to deliver universal access to child care, it needs to take into consideration the very real and diverse needs of parents today and all of the options that are available out there. It should not shut out those small, female-owned and operated child care programs that are so desperately needed. I would encourage that member and his colleagues to consider all that is not contained in this bill and the implications that it has for young families across Canada.
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