44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 8, 2023 10:00AM
- Jun/8/23 10:08:47 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is timely that I table this petition on behalf of youth from Qualicum Beach in my riding. They cite that children born in 2020 will face, on average, two to seven times more extreme weather events than their grandparents. Clearly, we are on the higher end of that. In a 2021 report in The Lancet, 83% of children worldwide reported that they think people have failed to take care of the planet. Those most affected by climate change are the youngest generation, as they will live to see the worst effects of this crisis.
Youth discussion has proven crucial to successful climate action and policy creation. However, dozens of climate-related decisions are made without input from youth. Statistics around the world show that if youth were making these decisions, the representation in Parliament outcome would be different. Children under 18 are not legally allowed to vote and are therefore without legal voice or action.
They are calling on the Government of Canada to require all members of Parliament, regardless of party line, to consult with secondary or elementary school leadership, a student council or an environmental youth group in their ridings before Parliament holds the second reading of any bill that directly affects Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. The purpose of the consultation will be to listen to the viewpoints of those directly affected by the specified bill who do not already have representation in Parliament.
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- Jun/8/23 3:55:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was teasing the member earlier. I always have a good exchange with him and I appreciate his question.
The reality of the situation is that I understand there is an affordability crisis out there. I understand that a lot of people are struggling. However, yesterday I got an email from my son's school that told us that kids would not be going outside for recess yesterday as a result of the smoke in the air. He is in grade 1. I do not ever remember that happening when I was a child. I do not want my children to grow up in a world where we have many days like what we had over the last couple of days.
Yes, the member is right. There are a lot of people struggling with affordability in particular right now, but we also have to do something about protecting our environment. This comes down to finding a balance. Where is that balance? I think, ultimately, that is where the struggle is.
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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 7:45:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I said before, there are many forms of child care, and those forms can be quality. I would not like to tell the young mother running a day care in her home, who manages to accommodate her own children and the children of neighbours who trust her with their care as she provides loving care to them, who will be often shut down by this program, that she is not providing quality care. There are many places that, yes, make some money, not a great deal of money, in for-profit day care providing quality, caring and nurturing child care to children.
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- Jun/8/23 7:46:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank all of the members who are in the House today contributing to this very important debate. I am delighted to be here, representing the people of Edmonton Strathcona.
I come to this debate from a place that I think many of us do. I am a parent. I am a mother. I know exactly what it was like to try to get child care for my children. I remember going to centre after centre trying to find a space to help our family as we tried to find child care for my two children, who are perfect in every way. It is important that I mention that. We did find child care for them. We were very happy with our child care and we were very happy with the child care providers who provided that service to us, but I also know that I came from a place of privilege. I was lucky enough to be able to pay a very high price for child care. I was lucky enough to live in an urban community where child care spaces were available. The child care spaces I was able to find were in a non-profit centre and I trusted the care that my children were receiving, but I also remember getting that call two years after my daughter started day care from one of the other centres, saying they finally had a space available, two years after she started day care. Families cannot wait that long. Women cannot wait that long for day care spaces.
We, within the NDP, have been saying for a very long time that child care is fundamental. I stand in this place on the shoulders of the champions of child care who have come before me within the New Democratic Party. Olivia Chow tried to bring forward legislation to make child care a reality. I have seen members of our caucus now work so hard on this child care file. The member for Winnipeg Centre has done more to move this child care discussion forward than I think any other member of Parliament here has done. I know the member for London—Fanshawe, in previous Parliaments, has tried very hard to make child care a reality. In fact, the previous member for London—Fanshawe also tried very hard to make sure that child care was a reality. On top of those people, colleagues within the NDP are also held up and supported by the incredible child care advocates around this country, the incredible labour leaders who have been pushing for this since the 1970s, pushing to have legislation in place, because we always knew that child care was the best thing we could do for families, for women and for children.
The other thing I wanted to highlight is that this particular bill coming forward is something that I think we can all be proud of. We can all be proud that this piece of legislation is coming forward. It is a piece of the supply and confidence agreement that the New Democratic Party of Canada has with the Liberal Party of Canada. This is another one of those pieces the New Democrats have forced the Liberals to do. We would not have this legislation if we did not have that in the supply and confidence agreement.
Today was an exciting day for us as New Democrats because, of course, today the budget implementation act was passed, despite the attempts from the Conservatives to block it. The leader of the official opposition said that he would do anything in his power to stop the bill being voted on, but then it got voted on a couple of hours later. That is a different debate for a different day, but we got dental care today. That was something that New Democrats pushed for. Dental care is something that I think we all should be very proud of, and child care is again one of those things.
There are a few things that I want to discuss about child care. Many members have stood in this place and talked about the challenges with this. I agree. There definitely are challenges with making this child care a reality for every family, for every woman across this country. There is lots of work to be done. It is not going to be enough to pass this legislation, brush our hands and be done. This legislation will require the government to continue to do that very difficult work of making sure that those child care places that are available are available to people in all communities, that they are accessible and that they are quality. That is one of the things that I think are most important.
When we look at child care, we need to ensure that these spaces are quality child care, that they are quality child care positions and that they are accessible to all families. That means we want to make sure that they are available to moms who have different work realities. We want to make sure that they are available to people in rural communities, in northern communities and in communities that have had trouble finding child care workers. We want to make sure that those places are there. That is the work that needs to go into this going forward.
We also want to make sure that we are investing federal dollars, public dollars, into a public system. This is an ideological difference between the Conservatives and the New Democrats, just as how Conservatives believe in private health care and we do not. We fundamentally think that health care is better when it is publicly delivered and universally accessible, paid for not with a credit card but using a health card. We believe that on health care. We believe that on child care.
Fundamentally, we know that child care is better when it is publicly delivered, when it is delivered within the public good. It is like long-term care. During COVID-19, we all saw that it was the private long-term care centres that had the highest mortality, that had the highest pain for seniors and that had the highest level of indignity that seniors went through during the terrible time of COVID.
It is the same idea. One cannot make profit off of child care without cutting corners. It is just not possible. That is how one makes profit on child care. One pays the staff less. One cuts corners and quality of care. For our young people, that is not what we are looking for.
That brings me to my next point. I want to talk about child care workers. We have a very big concern that there is a shortage of child care workers. How do we address that? We make sure that child care workers are paid adequately. We make sure that child care workers are able to access and pay for the training that they need, that they are able to support their families and that the job they have is a family-sustaining job. That is how we get more people to be involved in child care work.
In my province, we have an unbelievable group of folks who are working on the child care file. I have met with them many times, the advocates who have been doing some of this work for such a long time. Susan Cake is one of those advocates. She is the chair of Child Care Now Alberta. She says that “while it could be great that we will have 20,000 more spaces for children in Alberta, we need a concrete plan to staff these spaces. We need a plan to educate more Early Childhood Educators and we need a wage grid, inclusive of pensions and benefits, to ensure fair compensation across the province.”
I think that is fair. We cannot look at this program without looking at the idea of making sure that child care workers and child care educators are provided with the resources they need.
We need this in legislation for one really fundamental reason, which is to protect child care from Conservative governments. I have to say it. In Alberta, we have a premier right now who said, in 2021, that signing the $10-a-day child care program was a terrible decision, that it should not have happened and that they should never have done it. She, of course, campaigned on this $10-a-day child care and claimed it as her own, but this is something that is deeply worrying. We have a Conservative Party here whose leader has actually said that he does not believe in this child care program and that he would scrap the spending that is going into it.
I have some serious concerns about what we have to put into legislation. It is not just because child care is the right thing to do. It is not just because child care is vitally important for women, for families and for children. It is not just so that we can ensure that workers are paid an adequate wage, so that quality, accessible child care is available in every place in this country. Rather, it is also to ensure that, no matter what, Conservatives cannot take child care away from families and give money to their friends instead.
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- Jun/8/23 7:58:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, boy, that is quite a question.
I spoke about the importance of protecting the workers who work within our child care centres. I talked about how this is fundamental for allowing women to go back to work or letting them go back to work.
When the member brings up a question like this, what he is really trying to ask is why there is not money for the for-profit centres. He is asking why money is not being given to the Conservatives' friends for the for-profit centres. I am not interested in answering that. He knows the answer. It is because better-quality child care comes when it is not for profit. Non-profit child care is of better quality. I want it for my family, my children and every child in this country.
It is not a very realistic question.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour once again to rise in this House today as representative of the amazing people from the riding of North Okanagan—Shuswap.
I rise today to speak to report stage on Bill C-35, an act respecting early learning and child care in Canada, or as the Liberals love to call it, the universal child care plan. I will be speaking to some extent about how it is not really a universal child care plan; instead, it is a plan that would benefit those in areas with access to day care, especially those who already have children in day care. However, it leaves out the 50% children living in what have been called “child care deserts”.
I support anything we can do to make life better for young parents, or even grandparents or guardians, who are raising children anywhere. However, I am not sure the Liberal-NDP government does. It is a number of years since my wife of 44 years and I required child care. As I go back to those wonderful years, and all those 44 years have been truly wonderful thanks to her, I recall that there was a time when we were coming out of the recessionary times caused by a former Liberal government that had a spending problem. It caused massive inflation and skyrocketing interest rates.
During those wonderful years, we struggled to afford our home, to put food on the table and to provide the best for our daughter. We were only able to do that because we had family help. We had family members only minutes away who were able to provide child care so that my wife could return to work to help pay the bills.
The bills at that time were so inflated that we thought we were doing well when we got our first mortgage at 9.5% and a second mortgage at 12.5%. Friends had bought a few years prior at mortgage rates of 19% to 21%. That was all caused by a former Liberal government's overspending, which caused incredible inflation.
We have now come to a point where we are grandparents to a beautiful granddaughter, who has made our hearts grow more than one size bigger. I believe she is at home watching with her parents, so Grampy says hi to Ava. We are blessed, as she and her parents are, that they have access to good day care for her, because they live in a larger city.
While this bill is touted to be about universal child care, it is very clear that it will not be universal. With 50% of children in Canada living in child care deserts, it simply cannot be called “universal”. In fact, my colleagues have proposed that the short title of the bill be changed from the current title of “Canada Early Learning and Child Care Act”.
With 50% of children living in areas without government-approved day care, Conservatives have been the only ones raising the alarm bells that parents have been ringing, and that the government, in its usual fashion, has failed to listen to or understand. This is much as it failed to listen to the warnings it was given about massive deficits causing life to be unaffordable, especially for young families.
I mentioned that we had family close by. We had a caring grandmother who gave us a choice, so my wife could return to work. We had the choice of what we thought was the best day care possible for our daughter. This bill would not give parents the choice of how they want to provide day care for their children. They will not benefit from this bill if they live outside of urban centres or if they choose to have a family member or friend provide child care.
Universal child care needs to be truly universal. It needs to be universal to those in the urban centres, and it needs to be universal to those who choose to provide non-government supported child care. It needs to be universal to low-income families that do not have transportation or some of the other amenities and benefits available those with higher incomes. It needs to be universal to those living in rural areas, such as those in my riding in areas like Falkland, Cherryville, Anglemont, Adams Lake or Malakwa, all areas that could be a 30-minute to an hour-long drive to a community with child care covered by this program.
Young parents living in these communities would face long drives, fuel costs and time in dangerous winter or summer traffic conditions just to get their children to child care, instead of having access closer to home on a more equitable basis, where they may be able to carry on a home-based business or work at a local small business. They cannot do that under this program.
Witnesses testified at committee about the problems with the shortage of spaces and how it is not a universal, equitable plan. Ms. Maggie Moser, director of the board of directors of the Ontario Association of Independent Child Care Centres said:
The CWELCC program has not delivered good value for taxpayers and does not meet Canadian standards of equity. The implementation provides undue benefits to higher-income families, who are sailing their yachts on the tides of the program, while those who need it most are left drowning.
Lower-income families were excluded from obtaining access to the CWELCC child care spots. Families who could already afford the fees of their centre were the ones who benefited from the rebates and discounts, while the rest were left behind on a long wait-list.
She also talked about the association she works with, stating:
We have 147 spaces as well as 24 half-time spaces, going all the way from infant up to kindergarten. Our centre is 100% full. There is not one empty space in our centre.
At the moment, we have around 600 names on our wait-list. They are for spots in the next year and a half. It is a current list, in that we ask our families to contact us every six months to maintain their registration. If they haven't done that, we take them off the list so that we can maintain a list only of families who are now looking for the next 18 months.
I am disappointed that the Liberal-NDP coalition continues to mislead Canadians in so many ways. For them to be labelling this as a universal child care bill and program is absolutely false. It is disgusting they are misleading Canadians by failing to recognize the 50% of children in Canada will not benefit from this program, especially those in rural communities and those who are not in a program already.
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- Jun/8/23 8:12:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his speech.
Here is what I understand from his speech and the beginning of his last answer. He does not approve of a government urging people to make greater use of child care services rather than looking to other options, such as keeping children at home with a family member.
Is he saying that, if a government provides some kind of support, it should be neutral in terms of choice and there should be just as great an incentive to keep children at home as there is to send them to child care?
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- Jun/8/23 8:13:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I believe that parents should have the choice of where they send their children for child care or day care, whether that be in their own home with nannies or other people, even family members, coming in to provide child care in the parents' and child's own home, or through the other process. That needs to be more universal, which this program is not even close to providing.
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- Jun/8/23 8:27:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a fairly good understanding and grasp of what is going on in Quebec, and there are good things going on; there is no question. How it is being funded is interesting as well, because Quebec is depending on a lot of transfer of funds. That being said, there are still 80,000 children on wait-lists.
When I came here in 2015 and we studied that system as this was first brought up in the House, the truth of the matter is that there were children who aged out before they ever got that care, because there were not enough spaces. Perhaps it is better now; I have not taken a look lately, but the truth of the matter is that it is a real challenge. According to the information I have from Cardus—
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