44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 8, 2023 10:00AM
- Jun/8/23 3:00:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, massive deficits cause inflation. Inflation causes rate hikes. Rate hikes make mortgage payments unaffordable. Unaffordable payments lead to mortgage defaults.
However, there is a solution. The Liberal government could stop the deficits, stop inflation, stop rate hikes and prevent defaults. Even the finance minister agreed with this basic advice a few short months ago.
When will the Prime Minister end his inflationary deficit spending?
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- Jun/8/23 3:01:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the latest interest rate hike is having a devastating effect on Canadian homeowners and homebuyers.
Half of homeowners say that their mortgage is already barely affordable now, and shocking higher payments are only one renewal away. Rate hikes are also crushing the dreams of new homebuyers and threatening to collapse transactions that are currently in progress.
When will the Prime Minister take the advice of former Liberal finance minister John Manley, take his foot off the inflationary gas pedal and rein in his deficits?
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- Jun/8/23 6:31:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I request a recorded division.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to speak in the House of Commons and represent my constituents by lending my voice to debate on the various bills that come before this chamber. Tonight, we are talking about Bill C-35, an act respecting early learning and child care in Canada.
I have knocked on a lot of doors as a candidate and even an activist in the past. One meets a lot of people at the doors, especially in a riding like mine, which is a suburban riding full of neighbourhoods geared toward younger parents with young families. My riding is statistically younger than the average in Canada, and it is full of homes geared toward families with children. I see a lot of parents and kids at the doors.
Parents and families are under a lot of pressure. We are in the midst of a cost of living crisis. We are in an inflation crisis, where food, transportation, housing, all these things, are ever more expensive. The government has done many things to make these things more expensive, such as the carbon tax, which basically raises the price of everything, but especially food and transportation, whether it is gasoline, bus passes or the way that transportation costs inflate everything. Child care is, of course, among the many ever-increasing expenses that parents face.
When I knock on a door, I never know what I am walking into. Every political candidate here knows the experience, knocking on doors down the whole street, when we get to a door where a young parent answers with a toddler in one arm and a couple more active kids in the house. We may be getting them in a moment of stress. They will talk about a lot of things that make life stressful for parents, such as affordability.
I do not know that I have talked to a parent at a door who said what they really need is a bill that will declare things like quality, availability, affordability, accessibility, inclusiveness and create a new board that would report to a minister. They just want to know that they have access to a child care space. More often, it is a more general sense of financial relief they are looking for; of course, child care is a big piece of this for many families. The bill that we are debating tonight does not offer much in the way of relief from the financial stress and strain that parents are facing and the ability to have confidence in knowing that there will be child care space. Saying the word “availability” does not create child care space.
If one flips through the pages of this bill, there is really not a whole lot here. There are a few pages of throat clearing, definitions and things like that. We get down to its purpose and declarations, where it boldly states the government's “vision for a Canada-wide, community-based early learning and child care system and its commitment to ongoing collaboration with the provinces and Indigenous peoples to support them in their efforts”. It goes on with this talk of goals. I suppose it is good to have goals. If I were a motivational speaker, I guess I would encourage people that way. However, just stating that one has goals is not going to create a child care space, and neither will this bill.
The funding principles that are stated here enshrine in law the government's agreements that it has already entered into with the various provinces and territories. These agreements exist separately, and this bill just talks about them and their principles.
One principle the Liberals are quite clear on is that the only model of child care they really want to address, through not only this bill but also their entire program and the agreements they have entered into, is government and non-profit child care, which would exclude many parents and many entrepreneurs, who happen to almost always be women, operating existing child care facilities.
There are many models of child care that are, at best, not affected at all by this bill, but at worst, they are threatened or challenged by this bill. That came out in testimony when this bill was discussed at the committee stage. The one concrete thing this bill does is establish a national advisory council on early learning and child care. They have created a board. I do not think that is something that will do anything to create child care spaces that do not exist.
We know the Liberals like boards. They give them an outlet for them to appoint their friends. We have seen this before. They can appoint defeated Liberal candidates, Liberal donors or any of their friends. It comes in handy for the Liberals to have their friends appointed to various boards. We see that rather shockingly working itself out with the appointment of the special rapporteur.
This bill would not do anything for Canadians who cannot access spaces. This bill would help some families who already have access, and those families are benefiting from the government's vision for child care. They are having their costs reduced.
There is an entire other set of parents and children who do not have access. We have entire provinces that have virtually no child care. They have been called “child care deserts”. It has been remarked upon how many people in Saskatchewan have no access to a child care space. There is nothing in this bill that would address that.
It may even harm some of the entrepreneurs, as I said, who have existing businesses who do not fall within this model. Newfoundland and Labrador is another province we heard, during the committee study, has limitations of space that nothing in this bill would address.
It is easy to say the word “accessibility”. It is easy to say the words “affordability”, “quality” and “inclusivity”. However, it is hard to see these spaces created and brought into existence. There are too many Canadians who are left out by this bill.
It is a shame about the sensible amendments. They may have helped modify the principles of the bill to make it more inclusive of different models of child care across Canada. That sadly did not happen. We are left with a bill that is full of promise, but short on actual substance to improve the lives of Canadian families.
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- Jun/8/23 6:42:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is something of a false premise there, which is that this bill would suddenly conjure $10-a-day child care for everybody. That is not what this bill would do.
The member asked me a direct question about support for this bill, and I will point out to him that I voted for this bill at second reading. I supported this bill going to committee, where it could have been improved through committee study. It was very disappointing that members of the government caucus who are on that committee were not open to amendments. Ironically, the Bloc members, the separatist party members, were prepared to work with Conservatives to improve a bill on a national, federal program.
There were members at committee prepared to make this bill better. I continue to wrestle with rewarding the failure of the Liberal government to fulfill the objectives of the bill, yet I do support the objective of having child care that is available for Canadians, affordable and high-quality .
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- Jun/8/23 6:44:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is just it. It is about the actual care and quality of care for the children. Most parents, given the choice between a bill that enshrines principles and a day care space that is affordable, would probably choose the affordable day care space.
Again, this is what we often see with the Liberal government and the bills it introduces. The Liberals want to be rewarded for the intentions of their bills rather than their ability to execute and achieve the outcomes they state.
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- Jun/8/23 6:45:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is exactly my point. The member is correct that the one concrete thing this bill does is create a commission and paid positions for people to talk about child care. I do not see a specific, real, true strategy to deliver on the objectives stated in the legislation.
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