44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 31, 2023 02:00PM
Madam Speaker, it is wonderful to join my voice to the debate tonight in speaking to this important bill, but first I want to take a moment to thank all the first responders and firefighters who are working so hard to keep people safe. I especially want to give a big thanks to all the volunteers who have opened up their hearts and homes, and all of the people who are sharing their time, talent and treasure to make all of those who have been displaced by fire feel welcome.
To get to the matter at hand, as people have probably realized, families look different across our country and across so many different spaces and places. This is such a challenging spot because there is not enough child care. While this bill has some very lofty goals in it, it has not necessarily created the child care spaces, which has created some unique challenges.
Coming from Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, I have had the opportunity to speak to a number of families that have a different type of work environment than many. I have had the opportunity to meet a lot of shift workers, a lot of moms who are nurses while the dad is a firefighter, or they both work up in the oil sands in a variety of spaces and have shifts that cross every so often.
One of the biggest pieces I heard from that was that the standard Monday to Friday, nine-to-five child care just does not fit their families. They need child care three overnights a week, or they need child care six days a month because, between their shifts and their spouse's shifts, they can mostly be home with the kids, but the rigidity of the Monday to Friday, nine-to-five, Ottawa-knows-best child care, which works well in some locations, does not work well in all locations.
This is part of the problem. In the community of Cold Lake, I get to chat with so many amazing Armed Forces members who serve our country so diligently, going on deployments all around Canada and the world, not only protecting us but also standing up as part of our NATO allies and protecting peace in the world. That Monday to Friday, nine-to-five child care especially does not work for them. It makes it that much more difficult. I was chatting with one woman just last week, and she was explaining to me how they had delayed having a family, not because they could not afford it but because they were not sure how they would physically make it work, as both she and her husband serve. They were asking how they would piece this together to do something when the availability is not there.
In the past, many parents and families would have relied on perhaps a nanny or a live-in caregiver of some sort, but because of the extensive delays in immigration, that path is not as available or accessible as it had been in the past.
That is one of the overwhelming pieces I have heard in my role as the member of Parliament for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake. For a lot of parents who I chat with, a lot of my friends and people in my communities, their number one ask is for flexible child care. They want to see some innovation. They want to see something that serves their family unit, understanding that it looks a lot different than perhaps the average or what used to be.
This does not seem to be addressed in this bill. I think this is part of the problem because the Liberals are solving a problem for what the average family might have looked like 30 years ago. That is not what today's families necessarily look like. That is something that I think we can and should do better on.
I am participating virtually, and I am addressing this chamber for the first time in over a month because I had a baby. The fact that we have flexibility in our Parliament to allow people to participate and still be full members, giving speeches, asking question, giving member's statements and participating in committees virtually, allows more women to be able to participate.
If we are going to continue allowing child care to just fit into this box and say that it has to be a certain way, that having a grandma look after her grandkids or having a trusted neighbour fill that role cannot be part of someone's solution, then I do not think that necessarily gets to the space.
While I was trying to prepare for this speech, I decided to call some child care operators I know. One of the child care operators I called is a friend of mine. Her name is Kyla Penner, and she owns KPSquared here in Fort McMurray. KPSquared is an amazing child care facility that has innovative child care, and it is actually expanding to have 24-hour child care. One of the coolest pieces about its child care model is that it really focuses on the family unit. It has the availability for parents to select when they need the child care. If they only need six days a month, they can pick those six days a month. If they need overnight care, very soon, they will be able to pick overnight care. This gives flexibility to a lot of families, and it is something that works for a lot of families.
Before the child care deal came into place, KPSquared was very sought after in our community, and it had a wait-list of approximately 300 people. Today, I asked Kyla how many people were on the wait-list. She said over 625, but she would need to look to get a more precise number than that. It is not access to child care if the length of the wait-list is 625 people. I talk to so many parents, and I see so many Facebook and Internet forums that talk about the fact that the reality is this: Parents are going and putting their kids on every single wait-list they can possibly find because they just need child care, and they have been promised it.
They have been told that, somehow, there is $10 child care, but we have not actually put the infrastructure into place to make this work. We have not spent the time talking to parents or child care providers to hear where some of those bottlenecks are. The bottlenecks that I have heard about are the fact that we do not have enough early childhood educators to be able to meet the demands so that we can have the staffing. We do not have enough people in those positions, and we do not have a system or a plan in place on how to educate people enough to be able to meet those needs. We also have not figured out that not all parents pick child care based on price. A lot of them pick child care based on flexibility, the proximity to work, how convenient it is for the family unit, or religious or linguistic requirements.
I have heard from many families who picked one child care space over another because they valued being able to have their children in a francophone day care, because that was very important to their family. This is all important. It is something we should value. We should be trying to see how we can expand to let a grandmother assist.
I heard the minister say earlier that it is a lot of work and that grandparents should not be expected to do that. I am not saying that grandparents should be expected to do it. That is not an option in my family. Both my parents are gone. My dad passed away this last year and my mom a dozen years ago, so that is not even an option. However, I have friends whose parents get their joy from being the primary provider of care for their grandchildren. They retired early specifically to be able to make that work for their family. For those families who have that as an option, I do not understand why we would not be supporting that.
That is going to be part of how we get enough spaces, so that the families who do not have that as an option, or do not want to use that for a variety of very good reasons, have the space available to them. What I am saying is that families look different. I am going to continue stressing this, because I think it is so important.
We need flexibility in our child care. We need innovation. We need more people like Kyla and KPSquared, because that is how we are going to solve this problem, not by creating an Ottawa-knows-best, one-size-fits-all solution.
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Madam Speaker, it is wonderful to participate and see this innovation in this place.
No, it does not actually explicitly say that we cannot have that as an option. Some of the families I have talked to are paying their parents because they retired early. If they could have some funds to offset that cost and have the same amount of resourcing available to them, it would make a big difference when it comes to the feasibility of this. However, this is the part where the bill does not allow for enough innovation to allow families to have the space to make the choices that are best for them.
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Madam Speaker, one of the interesting and amazing things I found when I was chatting with Kyla from KPSquared was that it has a really high retention rate when it comes to child care workers. Part of that is because it pays better than average. However, that is a decision KPSquared made for business reasons, and it is seeing a lot of success from that.
Something we see when we empower people to make choices is that good decisions can be made. We absolutely have to support this industry, and we have to find ways of making sure that we are not leaving people behind. However, I do not think an Ottawa-knows-best strategy for this is necessarily going to get us that solution. I think we need to empower women so that we can see more women in these positions of power making these decisions.
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Madam Speaker, that is a very complicated question to give a brief answer to.
Effectively, this was something the Government of Alberta had to fight very hard with the federal government in order to get done, even though it was absolutely in the best interests of Alberta families. However, I do not think it is unique to Alberta families. It could probably help families to have innovative, overnight child care available from coast to coast to coast. Frankly, the fact that it is restricted and only allowed in Alberta is a problem, and I want to see that fixed.
Why are we pitting provinces against each other? That is exactly what the federal government chose to do, because it decided that it knew best and it was going to do this. Frankly, I do not think that is going to serve all the families across the country well.
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