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Michelle Ferreri

Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
Conservative

Peterborough—Kawartha
Ontario
Voting Attendance: 67%
Expenses Last Quarter: $106,196.43

Government Page

Context: House Hansard - 282 - Feb/14/24

Feb/14/24 5:35:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do work very well with my colleague across the way. We, as Conservatives, supported her amendment in committee to support indigenous people, for children and parents to have that right under UNDRIP, and the Liberals did not. I think it is really insulting to these women-operated child care centres. Why are they not included? That there is research that they do not provide the quality has been said to me repeatedly. I have been to these centres. The quality of child care is deeply diminishing under this care because they do not have the money. They cannot charge more money. Their hands are tied. The quality in these not-for-profit centres is also dropping. Kids do not have access to food. Parents are getting nickelled and dimed. To say that they do not have the quality of care, in a small, independent, female-owned-and-operated child care centre, is not fair. I encourage members to go to see them.

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Context: House Hansard - 282 - Feb/14/24

Ms. Michelle Ferreri

Feb/14/24 5:22:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I look forward to my colleague's speech about this. I will get into that with the amendments. Going back to what we have seen now that this program has been delivered, the Liberals love to say it is transformational. That is absolutely true. The numbers on child care wait-lists under this program have skyrocketed. Child care centres cannot grow to meet the demand. Child care centres cannot afford to operate. There is a bias against entrepreneur-run child care centres and an open call to phase them out, which would decrease access even more. The people who need affordable child care the most are not getting it. This program is not equitable. The child is not the priority of this agreement. Instead, it is the ideology. Parents do not have a choice. Children with special needs, the numbers of which are going up as we see more neurodivergence, are not getting the support they need with this agreement. Access to child care has decreased, which means that, instead of empowering more women, it has taken away their choice and, yes, I have the statistics to back all of this up. This is setting the provinces up to take the blame when they were coerced into signing a flawed federal contract. Let us break this all down. It is quite easy to break down because, really, what we need to do is pick up the phone and answer the calls that have been, I am sure, flooding into constituency offices across the country. We can start with just a few quick statistics of what has happened. We know that 77% of high-income parents access child care versus 41% of low-income families. That is the statistic right now. How equitable is that? Should we not want to provide service where the people who need it the most can access it? The labour force participation rate for women was 61.5% in September 2023 compared to a high of 61.7% in 2015. The number of women in the workforce is going down, not up. The employment rate of female youth is on a strong downward trend since February 2023, with a cumulative decline of 4.2% over that period. This is the lowest since May 2000, excluding the pandemic. The number of children under the age of five in child care fell by 118,000 between 2019 and 2023, which is a decrease of 8.5% nationally. In 2023, 46.4% of parents reported difficulty finding child care, which is up from 36.4%. In Ontario, the proportion of children in child care was 48% in 2023 compared to 54% in 2019. Child care deserts are affecting nearly 50% of young children in Canada. It goes on and on, and the numbers are there. The numbers are real, but when we start to listen to the stories, that is where we really have to pay attention. As I have said multiple times in the House, there are true human consequences to the incompetence and wasteful spending of the government. We recently heard from Andrea Hannen. She oversees ADCO, which is the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario. She represents independent licensed child care centres, both commercial and not-for-profit. We are doing a study on economic empowerment for women in the status of women committee, where she said, “we have a sector of the economy that was largely created by women. It's essential to women's equality in the workforce. It's one of the only economic sectors in the country where women are fairly represented as owners and managers, and it's being not only undervalued by government but targeted for replacement by a government-run system.” What is even more disturbing about that testimony is that not one of the Liberal members in the committee disputed this. In fact, by their line of questioning, it was clear the Liberals were quite comfortable with the idea of arbitrarily eliminating small businesses. It seems now that this was their plan for child care. That is the reality of what we are talking about, and that is why this is an ideology-based system. They had the option multiple times to help these female-operated small business owners who are sitting at home and want to go back to work but who cannot leave their kid. They think they are going to do two things: start their own business to be an entrepreneur and help the other women in their lives and the families they know. They are going to invite children into their homes, care for them and provide quality care. What I have heard repeatedly across the country is that these women-owned day care centres are being targeted, bleeding money and shutting down. A woman wrote to me from Simcoe. I want to tell members that she told me that she, right now, is personally funding $20,000 to $30,000 per month just to pay bills so child care is available. She said that they are committing to helping their parents by being in this program. The program is called CWELCC, for the people at home, and it is an acronym for Canada-wide early learning and child care. She also told me that the reality is, by staying in the program, they will be bankrupt and they will lose 250 child care spaces. As well, 45 dedicated staff will be unemployed. This program will close the business that she worked so long and hard to build. That is the reality of what this program is doing. Members need not just take my word for it. I am sure that people are sitting at home, saying that I am a critic who has nothing nice to say about the Liberals. I do not because they have a record of repeatedly showing us that they cannot manage taxpayer money. All week, the news has been about an arrive scam app that should have cost $80,000, but $60 million is the total we know of right now, and it is probably more. They spent $1.36 billion on homelessness, and I do not know if anyone has been outside lately, but there seems to be a lot more tents. The government is famous for making people dependent upon it and then taking away what they are dependent upon and destroying them. The government did it with the media, and it has done it with so many other industries. It is doing it now with our post-secondary education and immigration for students. The government has turned off the tap. Now these universities do not know what they are going to do.

1122 words

Context: House Hansard - 189 - May/2/23

Ms. Michelle Ferreri

May/2/23 8:43:58 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, that is a really great question and it is clearly a very important role when we look at truth and reconciliation, but also giving back autonomy. There is a great saying, and it would be great if it was implemented: Nothing about us without us. Friendship centres are imperative. A lot of the indigenous people I know were taken from their homes, their culture and their roots. It is a journey to get back to who they were and what they were. I find extreme value in the friendship centres.

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Member of Parliament

Michelle Ferreri