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House Hansard - 284

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 16, 2024 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 284 - Feb/16/24
Mr. Dane Lloyd (Sturgeon River—Parkland, CPC)
  • Feb/16/24 1:02:04 p.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-35 
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.
1888 words
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