- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Sarnia—Lambton
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $118,419.33
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak once more to Bill C-35, an act respecting early learning and child care in Canada, with respect to the amendments that were provided by the Senate.
First, let me reiterate the Conservative Party's support for child care and for supporting women entering or re-entering the workforce as they balance their family lives. We want to see Canadians have equal access to child care in the forms that fit their families. This goes far beyond the Liberals' $10-a-day day care spots to include traditional day care centres; centres with extended, part-time or overnight care; nurseries; flexible and drop-in care; before- and after-school care; pre-schools and co-op child care; faith-based care; unique programming to support children with disabilities; home-based care; nannies and shared nannies; au pairs; stay-at-home parents; guardians who raise their own children; and family members, friends or neighbours who provide care. This is what it means to make up and support community, and our children and our grandchildren are some of the most vulnerable members in our communities. They all deserve high-quality care in the chosen style of their caretakers.
However, my Liberal colleagues have been clear that they do not want to amend the bill overall to include choice for parents. This is unhelpful for a variety of reasons. So many Canadian parents are not in a position to send their children to traditional day care during conventional work hours. First responders, medical personnel, military members, truck drivers and a whole host of others must work through the nights, weekends and holidays, when many traditional day care centres are closed, and they thus require specialized care. Do they not deserve flexible options that suit their needs, especially when so many of their jobs are community focused? Anyone working unconventional shifts to provide for themselves and their families is just as deserving of high-quality affordable child care as those who work Monday to Friday, nine to five.
I have personal experience in this realm. I raised my two daughters while travelling extensively for work as a chemical engineer. I have previously in the House discussed the challenges of securing child care for them while working around my busy travel schedule, especially when factoring in the realities of travel, which include delays, changed timelines and flights cancelled altogether. Families absolutely need options that work for their individual needs. When Conservatives form government, we would honour the provincial and territorial agreements and ensure parents have the choice and flexibility they deserve to remove the Liberal ideological shackles, if they so desire.
With regard to the Senate amendment of Bill C-35, the bill already contained references to the official language minority communities, or OLMCs, when it was sent to the Senate. However, the bill did not originally include any reference to them until the Conservative amendments were made during the clause-by-clause review done at HUMA and we introduced these safeguards. The references to the OLMCs in the bill now include a provision that federal investments related to programs and services for the education and care of young children should be guided by the commitments outlined in the Official Languages Act, and the inclusion of OLMCs and indigenous peoples in the composition of the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care.
We are grateful to the hon. senator from Acadia who proposed an amendment to include a reference in clause 8 to eliminate any ambiguity before the courts, and we continue to support his amendment today. The amendment would add the words “official language minority communities” to the first sentence of clause 8, after “including early learning and child care programs and services for Indigenous peoples”, and would divide clause 8 into two paragraphs. The first paragraph would then outline the government's financial commitment, while the second would specify the mechanisms through which the federal government would provide funding. To allay any remaining hesitancy, under no circumstances is it the intention to create a new direct-negotiation mechanism between the federal government and the OLMCs. The amendment text is very clear on this matter. Furthermore, adding a mention of OLMCs after the word “including” would not in any way diminish the rights of any other minority or indigenous peoples.
Clause 3 of the bill explicitly states that it would not infringe upon the rights of indigenous peoples as “recognized and affirmed by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982”. The amendment is simply to clarify the intent to ensure the consideration of OLMCs as stipulated in clauses 7 and 11.
There has been much study done on early childhood as a critical period for language development and the identity development of children. Access to French language early childhood services is often a necessary condition for the transmission of language and culture in French communities. These services help young children acquire the language skills they need to prepare for education, especially for children who will enter French language or immersion schools across the country. This is all upholding the right to education enshrined in section 23 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Critically, and to assuage fears from across the aisle, this amendment does not introduce any new funding mechanism and merely aims to clarify financial commitments. Especially with Sarnia—Lambton recently receiving the official Francophone designation and with French language use in danger throughout the country, it is more critical than ever to establish and protect these services for our official language minority communities.
This amendment was adopted by a large majority of senators, who clearly understand and appreciate both the need to increase child care spaces and access to them and the need to deliver services across the board in both of our official Canadian languages. It is clear now more than ever just how important and critical child care is, in terms of both obtaining an early child care space and maintaining it if one is lucky enough to have one, for recruiting and retaining women in the workforce.
The employment rate for young women has been on a strong downward trend since last February, with a cumulative decline of 4.2% over that period. This is the lowest since May 2020, excluding the pandemic. More than 46% of parents reported difficulty finding child care in 2023, which is up from 36.4% in 2019, so more parents are having trouble finding child care now, in the era of the Liberals' $10-a-day child care, than before.
A column in the Financial Post last week alleges that the Liberals' national child care plan is proving to be “an expensive shambles, creating widespread shortages and destroying private child care businesses”. This problem spans the country, with issues from Newfoundland and Labrador to British Columbia.
This week there has been a slate of news reports across the country, with headlines despairing over the lack of access to child care, including the Liberals' $10-a-day program. Day care operators, including the owner of Little Heroes Daycare Centre here in Ottawa, say they cannot turn a profit and are not even breaking even since opting in to the $10-a-day program, which they did out of their desire to assist their families, to their own detriment.
To further illustrate, as part of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women's current study of women's economic empowerment, the executive director of the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario, which represents independent licensed child care centres, said, “[W]e 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.”
The Liberals are undercutting their own economy once again and pushing costs onto taxpayers while denying Canadians the freedom to choose what works best for their families. What is more is that one of the main goals of the $10-a-day plan was to enable women to join the workforce in greater numbers, but a recent Fraser Institute report looking at that issue indicates there is “little evidence” whether the Liberal program is reaching its stated goals. It reads, “There is also little evidence that the federal government is achieving [the second] goal of boosting the labour force participation of women with children.”
As the StatsCan data I quoted earlier shows, the employment rate for young women is on a downward trend. It is another example of the problem of the Prime Minister's fake feminism.
I will be generous and allow that the pandemic exacerbated the issues of child care, and many well-meaning parents changed their plans and their lives to accommodate for a more precarious world, either changing work hours to watch children, changing jobs or leaving the workforce altogether. However, the Liberals owe Canadian parents and families that much more for letting them down in the first place.
Conservatives, when we form government, will put Canadians first and prioritize freedom of choice and family life, empowering parents to make the decisions that best serve their child care needs and not just what the government prescribes.
If I look over the history of my own journey with child care, I will say that it is very difficult when only one in 10 families are covered by the existing program. That is nine out of 10 families that are not. I have people calling my office asking if I can help them find child care. It is almost impossible.
I had some very wonderful child care providers and some not-so-wonderful child care providers. Ms. Betty was a school teacher who was off with her own kids. She was probably a better mother than I will ever be, so that was great. She was flexible, because I could drop the kids off at 5:30 in the morning if I had to catch a flight at six o'clock. If a flight was cancelled, late, or the kids had to stay late, she had flexibility. That is really important for a lot of workers today.
Similarly, I had Joanne, who was wonderful. She was a stay-at-home mom with her kids. Once again, she was flexible and gave excellent care. However, she moved and I was left in a cycle of trying to find child care. It started with Sarah, who was a mom at the preschool that my kids went to, but once my kids were eating cat food on her stairs, I had to find another one. Then there was the student who was smoking weed and hanging out with her boyfriend. That one went away. Then there was Karen. I should have known maybe just by the name, but she was watching soaps when I came home and found out she has let my kids go swimming with a male neighbour some place up the road. That was not so great. There was a happy occasion with Generations Day Care in Petrolia, which was a wonderful experience. It was certainly expensive, but worth it. The pinnacle was Andrea, an ECE worker who became my nanny. She was able to stay overnight if I needed, make meals if I was travelling, and do anything that was needed. When my kids got older and went to high school, she opened her own day care and they ended up working there, so that was fantastic.
There is a lot of need. We need more care and in order to get more care we have to build on the $10-a-day child care and we have to allow parents to have choices. We have to figure out how we are going to help with those, because I think that is fair.
We also need to consider that, with the inflation we are seeing, the cost of food and heating is going up, and the interest rates are going up. All of these pressures are really affecting the cost of providing child care. I know when we studied this issue at the status of women committee we looked at the Quebec model. At the time, Quebec was charging less than $10 a day for day care and the actual cost was more like $47 or $48, which would have hugely increased now. However, the comment was that there were still long wait-lists. Therefore, I do not think it is good to have $10-a-day day care if there are no spaces. We need to provide more spaces. We need to be creative in figuring out how we help people get child care and broaden their freedom of choice so that people who work weird hours can get coverage, and people who have special needs children can get the care they need. All of these things I think will be important.
I know all of the provincial and territorial agreements have been signed. I always hear the Liberals whining about Conservatives wasting the time of the House on concurrence motions, but here we are debating something where the agreements have already been signed. Why do we have everyone state on the public record that we support this program when that is the case? We should move on.
Finally, I want to reiterate some of the things that have been implied. The members opposite have implied that Conservatives do not support this program. That is not true. We do support child care. Anyone can go to openparliament.ca and see that we all voted yes on Bill C-35.
I think there is more work to be done in this area. I certainly would like to see the government come forward with something that would not only address an increase in spaces but also help those who are less fortunate. We see that 71% of people who are taking advantage of the $10-a-day day care are higher-income people, whereas only 41% are lower-income ones. That does not seem right to me. I think there needs to be a means test. There needs to be something that favours those who need the help the most, because obviously we do not have enough spaces, so we have to prioritize.
If we could work with the provinces and territories to create some flexibility, I think that would help the private day cares. We need more spaces. We cannot afford to lose the ones we have, and that is what is happening. I am hearing from day care providers that are not eligible for this program that they are struggling, and many of them are even going out of business. I have heard from the ones that are in the program that they are having issues with cash flow because of the way the remuneration works.
I think there is more work to be done on this, but certainly we need to move in this direction. We want to see more women in the workforce. I certainly experienced the highs and the lows of child care, and would rather head in the direction of highs.
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- Feb/29/24 5:11:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, just to clarify, if people have been listening to the debates, they will know that Conservatives have consistently said that we support child care, and our leader is on the record as saying he is going to honour the agreements with provinces and territories, so I do not appreciate the efforts of the members opposite to spread misinformation and disinformation.
My question for the member is this: One out of 10 people is actually being served by the $10-a-day day care program that exists now, and there is a huge need, so does the government recognize that this is the tip of the iceberg and that so much more is needed if we are really going to solve the problem of affordable day care in Canada?
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Mr. Speaker, here is my question: The senators tried to make an amendment to eliminate individuals from this bill.
Does the member support that amendment?
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Madam Speaker, I see the outrage in the member opposite, but perhaps he could apply that to the party that he is supporting, the party that sold out health care in B.C. to Anbang. Does the member remember that? It was a total disaster. We had to come in and rescue them in the pandemic.
Huawei is another example, where the government sat on its decision for two years and let Huawei build all the 4G networks under Bell and Telus in this country.
Why does the member not take his outrage and apply it to the government that he is propping up?
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member opposite and all members who are supportive of the bill. I do believe, now that the controversial severance amendment is out, every member of the House will support the bill. I look forward to that and a little more debate on it.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservatives will always support lower taxes. That is why we are supporting Bill C-30. My concern is that with one hand, the government is giving a few hundred dollars back to Canadians, but with the other hand, it is actually taking that money away by increasing payroll taxes and the carbon tax and by continuing to spend in a way that financial experts are saying is fuelling the inflationary pressures we are seeing.
Would the member agree that this temporary band-aid is really not going to fix the problem?
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Madam Speaker, I am puzzled by my hon. member's speech. NDP members have said that they want dental care for all Canadians who currently do not have coverage, so I do not understand why they have agreed to this program that only covers children under 12 in some families, when many provinces already cover that, and that the rest will be post-2025 after the election when the Liberals do not need the NDP anymore. Why did he support it?
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Madam Speaker, certainly, everyone will support the need for a disability benefit. I just want to be sure I understand the situation. This bill has been introduced, but we do not know who would be eligible to collect it, how much it would be and when it would be implemented. Is that accurate?
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for her advocacy for persons with disabilities.
I am not very familiar with what is in place in B.C. in terms of supports, so I wonder if she could comment on what the province does currently and how she would like to see that augmented in order to correctly support people living with disabilities.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to return here to the House for a scintillating debate, and it is nice to start on a topic that all parties can agree on: the importance and the need for an increase to the support we are giving people who are living with disabilities.
To start, I wanted to read a letter that I signed with members from all parties that went to the minister to request that we expeditiously get this benefit in place. The letter does a great job of summarizing the desperate need for such a benefit. It states:
We write in support of the immediate re-introduction of the Canada Disability Benefit Act in order to reduce poverty and support the financial security of persons with disabilities.
We also call on the government to ensure that people with disabilities are meaningfully involved in the creation and implementation of the Canada Disability Benefit, and to work with provincial and territorial governments to ensure that the benefit complements provincial and territorial programs.
One in five people in Canada has a disability and over one million Canadians with disabilities live in poverty. People with disabilities in Canada have a higher rate of unemployment and people with severe disabilities earn less than $13,000 per year on average. People with disabilities face many direct and indirect costs from having a disability, including medical expenses, specialized equipment, accessible housing, and reduced earnings. COVID-19 has only exacerbated these inequalities.
The Canada Disability Benefit is an important step in removing the barriers that people with disabilities face in Canada, and it must be part of a comprehensive government approach that includes creating good quality jobs and disability-inclusive spaces.
It is critical that we move forward more quickly to support people with disabilities and, as parliamentarians representing different parties, we are ready to work alongside you to ensure that we build a truly inclusive Canada.
This is the kind of cross-party co-operation that Canadians are looking for.
If we look at the plight of the disabled, I cannot speak to how much in benefits they are receiving in other provinces, but I can tell members I have a continual stream of people coming to my office who are unable to afford to live. In Ontario, they get about $1,200 a month as their benefit.
We can think about the fact that affordable housing is a huge issue in this country. Across the country, Canadians cannot find a place to live that is affordable, but in my riding I would tell members that any place one can find is about $1,000 a month. We know a couple of years ago, before the pandemic started, 60% of Canadians were within $200 of not being able to pay their bills. That was before the pandemic and all the hardships that happened. It was before the subsequent, multiple increases to the carbon tax that the Liberal government put in place, which have increased the cost of home heating and increased the cost of groceries.
There is now an added burden on disabled people. If they have $1,000 to find a place to live in Sarnia and they have $200 leftover for everything else, along with all the increases that have happened, it is no wonder that people cannot afford to live. We are seeing them increasingly trying to go to food banks. We see all these problems they are having.
We also know that the health care system is in disarray in our country. For persons like me, trying to get a medical appointment to see a specialist, or whatever is needed, is difficult enough. However, to navigate that system for many persons living with disabilities is extra complicated and extra expensive. I think we would all agree in this House that there is a great need for the benefit.
When it comes to implementing things, it is important to know the details. I find this document is almost a virtue-signal that this is important to do, and we all agree that it is. How much is it going to cost? There has been out-of-control spending everywhere from the Liberal government. We all agree it is a good idea to spend here. However, how much is it?
The implementation of this also needs to not exclude people. It was I, on a Friday, in the House, who highlighted the problem with the disability tax credit, when the government decided to make 80% of people who used to be eligible for the benefit no longer eligible. Then they denied it. We chased them around for months and months, with the disability stakeholders calling out the government on it. Finally, the situation was remediated, but it was not just about taking away their tax credit. That also made them eligible for the disability pension benefit. If one did not get the tax credit, one did not get the pension benefit. When we are talking about implementing supports for the disabled, it is important we know who is eligible. That is going to be critical.
It is also important that we are not giving money with one hand and taking money away with the other hand. We are saying we are going to top them up, and I would argue the amount of topping up is important. The minister indicated that this would be like GIS, but she also said that people who are on OAS and GIS and are disabled go from 23% living in poverty to, when they turn 65, 9% living in poverty. If no disabled person should live in poverty, that tells me we do not have the right amount for the GIS, so that is going to be an important discussion as well.
The government is going to raise the carbon tax again in January. If one is giving money with one hand, while driving up the cost of groceries and home heating and taking the money away with the other hand, that is not going to be helpful at all. Therefore, that will be very important.
It has to be indexed to inflation. Certainly, we have the highest inflation that we have seen in this country in 40 years. Interest rates are up. People are concerned. If we are not keeping pace with that, it will be problematic. I do hear that, if everybody needs an 8.1% increase, it is going to be another inflationary pressure. It is more important than ever that we prioritize spending in the government and that we know clearly where we are going to spend.
When it comes to helping the disabled, I find that we are not always on the same page. The member for Carleton, who is our new leader, had brought a private member's bill to help disabled people. The minister talked about preventing the clawbacks that happened. His bill was going to address the clawbacks that were happening, but the government did not support his bill and it did not pass.
I think that all of us are looking for ways to help. I do not think we should only help by giving money to the disabled. I think we should be incentivizing their work, making it possible. I know that there are barriers they face in terms of accessibility, and the accessibility act, while well-intended, has not always come to fruition. In my riding, there are still places that were grandfathered under that and are inaccessible. Certainly, some attention needs to be paid there.
In addition, I would say that we need to look at the history of how we have treated the disabled community. The remarks from the minister were very well taken on this. We have a lousy track record. We need to get it right. To do that, we need to not just consult with provinces and territories to make sure they are not clawing back the benefits we are going to give, but I we also need to consult with people in the disabled community so that we understand how they need to receive that benefit.
My colleague from Calgary Midnapore mentioned that it is not clear whether it would be a monthly benefit or if it would come at tax time or what it would come as. People who are struggling to get by definitely need to receive this more regularly, so my opinion is that this would be something to take under consideration.
Certainly we will support this bill in principle, but when it comes to committee and all of the details, I hope that the consultations with provinces and territories have been done so that we can see how much of the benefit we need to put in place, so that we can get a costing on it, perhaps from the Parliamentary Budget Officer. I also hope we will be clear on who is going to be eligible and how that is going to be determined, because I would not want to see people fall through the cracks unnecessarily.
In terms of the implementation, it should be accelerated, but it is more important to do it right than to do it fast.
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- Mar/4/22 10:29:59 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his excellent speech.
This bill includes measures to provide funding for health care and COVID-19 tests. Every day, the Bloc asks for an increase in health transfers for Quebec.
What does the member think of these measures? Will he support them?
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