44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 16, 2024 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I guess it is an Atlantic Canada and Alberta problem.
To re-emphasize what my colleague said, the problem is so acute in my province that unions that represent child care workers say that they might have to close facilities because of the inadequacies in the way this bill, Bill C-35, was structured. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the Liberal government to address that.
To my colleague's point, child care is not a homogenous thing. We cannot expect it to be a homogenous thing because parents will raise their children according to their values, their traditions and their economic circumstances, so we cannot present nine-to-five, $10-a-day day care as a panacea. We have to value child care labour equally, be it provided by somebody next door, a grandparent or a parent, and this bill would not do that.
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Madam Speaker, first of all, I would point my colleague to the substance of the amendment we are debating today. I find it disappointing that the Liberal government did not demonstrate a commitment to linguistic duality in the first instance of Bill C-35. The other place had to propose an amendment to correct that, which, I am sure, is as important to my colleague as it is to me.
The other thing I would like to do, since I have the opportunity, is to thank the hard-working people of Alberta, who have contributed to the equalization program for so many years and have provided opportunities for provinces that may have benefited from that program.
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Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague that in any program seeking to provide universality, equality of access for indigenous persons has to be paramount.
To her question about whether Bill C-35 would provide true universality, it would not. Grandparents, who might provide unpaid labour at home, are not valued in this bill. The parent who works in the gig economy, shift work or part time, would likely not have access to those spots. In fact, it would be high-income Canadians who work nine-to-five jobs who would have access to these spots and would push out access to lower-income Canadians who need it the most. The government has put no safeguard in this bill to safeguard that at all, which is problematic.
Also, I fundamentally believe that the way this bill is structured undervalues the labour of child care, even those providing those spots for nine-to-five jobs, as we are seeing in my home province of Alberta with rolling closures. In no way, shape or form would this bill achieve true universality. My party, my colleagues, firmly believe that the provision of child care should be valued in all of its forms and that parents should have access to the workforce through access to affordable child care. This bill leaves a lot to be desired.
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- Feb/16/24 11:55:45 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, unlike the Conservatives, who deny that climate change exists, and who want to take money away from Canadians, what we are doing with the rebate is putting money back in their pockets. That is $1,100 to Ontario families, $1,800 to Alberta families and $1,200 to Manitoba families. The list goes on.
I would just like to ask the opposition whether it makes common sense to deny climate change and to cut benefits for Canadian families, including the carbon rebates.
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- Feb/16/24 12:44:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will take this opportunity to highlight that, in my province of New Brunswick, advocates have been calling for decades for access to a public child care system. They are really excited to see the advances that our government has made. Of course, we need to be there to support providers as this transition occurs and moves us to where we really want to see access to $10-a-day child care.
Unfortunately, the member also decided to take a swipe at the most vulnerable and speak about the issue of the guise of parental rights. I would like to ask him that question with regard to what is happening in Alberta. In consideration of parental rights, what does the member say to the parents who want gender-affirming care for their children but can now no longer access it because of government imposition?
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- Feb/16/24 12:45:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is important to say that the member is misrepresenting what is going on. For parents who want gender-affirming care, the government will not be standing in the way. The Premier of Alberta has made that abundantly clear.
What people do not want to see is the government forcing, swaying or moving the conversation a certain way without parents being part of the conversation. This is because parents, not the state, are the first caregivers for our children. That is the most fundamental thing that people need to know understand. We know that parents need to always be at the table when it comes to decisions for their own children. My biggest point is that parents need to be number one as the caregivers for children. That is what we are focused on.
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Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise to speak on Bill C-35. I want to start by addressing some of the amendments that were put forward by the other place.
In the initial part of this bill, there was no reference to official language minority communities, and it was Conservative amendments, made during the clause-by-clause review at the Standing Committee on Human Rights, that introduced these safeguards for our very important minority-language communities. We know that early child care is a crucial period for language learning and for the identity development of children. Access to French language early child care services is so necessary as a condition for the transmission of languages that have been transmitted by families over generations.
Several examples demonstrate the necessity of including these provisions in the bill. In Alberta, out of the so-called 1,500 new day care spaces announced by the government, only 19 were being allocated for francophones. That constitutes only 0.013% of all spaces, despite francophones representing 2% of the population of Alberta. It is important to protect these communities and their part in Canadian heritage that helped to build this nation, whether they be francophones in Alberta or anglophones in Quebec.
I want to talk about the great francophone heritage of my community. A gentleman, Ben Van De Walle, who is the son of the late, great member of Parliament from my area, Walter Van De Walle, who represented the great francophone communities of Morinville, Rivière Qui Barre and Legal. We have a very strong francophone identity in Sturgeon River—Parkland, and the Conservative amendments would go a long way to preserving our French-language heritage in our region.
Now that I have addressed these amendments, I want to talk about what I see as the unravelling disaster we are seeing because of the Liberal government's failed approach to child care. The proposed legislation and the current agreements made by the government with the provinces are failing to provide universal access to affordable child care and would cost far more than the government has estimated.
Small businesses are the backbone of our society, and the predominantly female entrepreneurs who are courageously trying to build businesses and build their livelihoods through providing child care are under attack by the Liberal government. The excessive red tape and regulations of the Liberal government are preventing day care entrepreneurs from opening new spaces and expanding their businesses. They cannot get the funding because the government will not fund new spaces.
This is making child care less accessible, and it is all because of the Liberal government imposing a one-size-fits-all model on a very complex sector of our economy. In the words of some child care operators, the Liberal government is essentially expropriating and nationalizing their businesses. I will use the words of one operator from Fort McMurray who said that, basically, they will “have no business” under the Liberal plan.
One of the government's tired talking points is its insistence that it has evidence-based policies. A more appropriate term would be evidence that is selective that corresponds with its ideological agenda. Let us go over some of the facts. As of the statistics published on February 6, just a short time ago, 77% of high-income parents have access to child care, and this compares to only 41% of low-income parents who have access to child care. It is a yawning gap.
I find it somewhat comedic that a Bloc MP earlier talked about how great this program is for single mothers. The University of British Columbia did a study in that province, in which it contacted all the child care centres to find out how many low-income single mothers were benefiting from this program. Across the entire province of British Columbia, it found 17 who were benefiting. There were only 17 single mothers benefiting, in the province of British Columbia, from the Liberals' failed day care policy.
Since 2019, the number of children under the age of five in child care has fallen under the Liberal government by 118,000 spaces. This is a decrease of 8.5% nationally. There was 46.4% of parents who reported difficulty in finding child care in 2023, which is up from 36.4% of parents in 2019. This is a problem that existed before the government's policy, but it is a problem that is only getting worse under the government's failed policy.
In fact, I personally know people who can only get one of their two children in child care, and they have to stay home to take care of the other children. These people are nurses and other skilled workers who cannot pursue their careers because the current government has made it more difficult for them to access any child care. It does not matter if it says it is affordable. If I could get 50¢ gas at the gas station, that would be great, but if there was never any gas at the gas station, it would not matter how affordable the price was.
Why is child care so expensive? We know that the key costs for child care, according to the operators, in order of magnitude, are labour costs, the cost of the facilities and the cost of food and other supplies.
Child care is a labour-intensive operation. The cost to create a space that is appropriate for children and the accompanying mortgage, rental costs, insurance costs and maintenance costs are extremely significant. Finally, the cost of food and other supplies has increased dramatically under this inflationary government.
What is a factor in all three of these costs? It is high inflation, which has increased the cost of labour, rent, mortgages, insurance and food at the local store. The price of food has gone up by 12%. Child care operators are not immune from these costs. They do not get some special discount at the store because they are child care operators.
The fact is that the Liberal government, through its inflationary policies, is driving up the costs to care for children in Canada. At the same time that it is driving up all of these costs, it is shortchanging child care operators by only giving them a 3% annual increase in their funding. They cannot support children when food prices are going up 12%, when wage costs are going up, and when mortgage costs are doubling and tripling, and rental costs are tripling. They cannot support these children with only a 3% increase from the government.
The Liberal government is expecting these predominantly female business owners to eat these costs. Consequently, it is causing them to shut down their business, to reduce spaces and restrict access to child care for Canadians.
In the child care sector in Alberta, we are already seeing the consequences of this inflationary agenda. Last month, parents in my riding were unable to get child care, because of closures in protest of these Liberal policies. Operators have described these agreements as underfunded and inflexible, and say that they threaten the financial viability of operators by placing fee caps and other restrictions on facilities that are struggling with these increased costs.
The owner of My Happy Place Daycare, in Stony Plain, Alberta said:
Right now, we are stuck between a rock and a hard place...Just being closed for the day has a huge impact. Imagine what would happen if day care centres across the province started closing their doors because they're going bankrupt.
I fear that because of these Liberals' ideological approach to child care, that is a future that we are seeing coming very quickly.
The proposed solution for inflation by proponents of even more government intervention in early child care is, no surprise, more inflationary spending. The government has tried to raise the wages of child care workers, but this is putting us into a wage spiral, because other groups that are competing for child care workers, such as school boards, are also raising their wages in order to compete for these workers.
In one case I spoke to a mother who worked in child care previously, before the government's policies were in place. She worked in child care because she received a significant discount for her own child's care at that facility. Once the government brought in its policies, her day care operator got rid of the discount, as it was not necessary anymore. She lost her incentive to work in child care. She has left that sector. Now there is one less child care worker.
I have spoken with child care operators who have had to pay increased rents and mortgages on their facilities. As everyone knows, mortgages and rental rates are skyrocketing after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government, particularly in the last year.
Under agreements the government has signed, child care operators are limited in the costs they can bill the government toward their rent and mortgage. Since they are mandated to only charge families a fixed price, there is no way these operators can make up the difference other than by reducing other costs. What are these costs? It is food and craft supplies. Do we really want to talk about reducing the quality of the food and the quality of the programming for our children, just so these day care operators could make up the costs of skyrocketing mortgages and rents, because the Liberal government will not support them?
What is actually happening now is that they are just choosing to shut down instead. They do not want to provide subpar care for children under the Liberal policies, so they are just shutting down altogether. It is terrible to see.
The laws of supply and demand mean that the government must either restrict the capacity of day cares or dramatically increase funding beyond what it has already promised. The first option is unfair. We cannot prevent people from accessing child care. Yet, what we are seeing is that it is predominantly middle- and high-income families that are getting access, and low-income families are being left out. This is backed up by research from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, which reported that the Liberal plan is not sufficient to meet the demand for child care. In fact, it will fall short in providing spaces for 182,000 children.
I said earlier that we have lost 118,000 spaces since 2019. The Liberal government is well on its way to meeting at least one of its goals, which is the reduction of child care spaces. It has reduced this number by 118,000, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer says it is going to 182,000 under the Liberal policies.
That is what we are already seeing in Alberta. Operators are struggling to stay open. They are closing down. They are reducing spaces. It is lowering accessibility for families.
We cannot continue going down this road. We need a new way to move forward. We need to support all child care operators, regardless of the model that they choose. We need to provide not only affordability for families but accessibility for families, and we are not getting it under this failed NDP-Liberal policy.
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Madam Speaker, I would say that the Liberals have actually foregone speaking times in this debate. If the member wants to jump in, he should talk to his whip.
Last but not least, Sharon Gregson of the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of B.C. says that while there are 130,000 licensed child care spaces in the province, 75% of children aged zero to 12 are unable to access them. It does not matter how inexpensive child care is if parents cannot access it. It is a fantasy.
I have seen this in my riding of Northumberland—Peterborough South. Numerous parents have come to or called our office and said, “Mr. Lawrence, we heard through the media that there would be $10-a-day day care,” and I have had to report to them that, unfortunately, there are a very limited number of spots, and most Canadians cannot access them. That is from the parents' perspective.
Let us hear what the child care providers have had to say. This is from a report in Global News about two weeks ago:
A number of Alberta child care facilities shut their doors Tuesday, protesting what they say are problems with the $10-a-day child-care program.
The Association of Alberta Childcare Entrepreneurs said the job action is meant to draw attention to the issues that come with offering parents low-cost child care without ensuring the cost of delivery is still covered.
“It’s been underfunded from the beginning,” said Krystal Churcher, the chair of the Association of Alberta Childcare Entrepreneurs. “There is not enough funding to ensure that the level of quality is going to be continuing on at a high level in this province.”
“You can’t even buy coffee and a muffin for $10 a day,” said Churcher. “We’re walking out in protest.”
We see, all the time, grandstanding from the government: big spending announcements and big plans. Although admittedly it is just tangentially related, I recently had the opportunity to ask the housing minister in finance committee about his housing accelerator program. I asked what I would have thought was a very straightforward, easy question for him to answer: How many houses has the housing accelerator built? I asked two or three times but did not get an answer until finally the minister admitted that the housing accelerator is not there to build houses. That is pretty much a word-for-word quote. The housing accelerator is great at building bureaucracy and the government is great at doing photo ops, but it is not delivering child care for Canadians and it is not delivering housing for Canadians.
I could go on, but I would like to talk about the substance of the amendment to Bill C-35. The original terms made no reference to the official language minority communities, a very important group. We need to protect our official languages. We need to make sure that French continues to grow. I attend my French classes every day because I believe it is absolutely critical we all take this seriously and help grow the beautiful French language.
The Senate proposed an amendment to the bill to include a reference to OLMCs in section 8 to eliminate any ambiguity before the courts. I will remind the House that section 8 reads:
The Government of Canada commits to maintaining long-term funding for early learning and child care programs and services, including early learning and child care programs and services for Indigenous peoples. The funding must be provided primarily through agreements with the provincial governments, Indigenous governing bodies and other Indigenous entities that represent the interests of an Indigenous group and its members.
Bill C-35 unanimously passed through the House last year. When it made it to the Senate, Senator Cormier, an Acadian who has stood up for francophones in the past and continues to do so, wanted to add the words “official language minority communities” to the first sentence of the section, which states, “including early learning and child care programs and services for Indigenous peoples,” and he divided section 8 into two paragraphs.
The first paragraph sets out the government's financial commitment. The second paragraph outlines the mechanisms the federal government will use to provide the funding. Adding the words “official language minority communities” after the word “including” does not detract from any rights of any other minority or of indigenous peoples, but seeks to eliminate any ambiguity before the courts.
Early childhood development is incredibly critical for kids. As I said when I started my speech today, and as we heard many speakers talk so eloquently about, as a government, we need to put children first. We need to make sure that we put out solutions and programs and that we do not limit or impair the ability of parents to raise their children.
I look forward to continuing the dialogue and the discussion on this topic and to celebrating—
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