- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Joint Interparliamentary Council
Whip of the New Democratic Party
Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- NDP
- Edmonton Strathcona
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $141,604.97
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, it is always very difficult to speak after the member for Nunavut because she is such a force within our caucus and such a champion for the people she represents. It is an honour to be in a caucus with her.
Today, we are talking about Bill C-35 and the amendments that have been brought forward. I want to start by talking about just how vital child care is in our country and what a fundamental thing it is to provide real child care across the country in an affordable way that women and families can access.
During COVID-19, I worked with the member for Timmins—James Bay to look at ways that we could have an economic recovery after the slowdown that happened during COVID. One of the things we heard constantly, whether it be from financial institutions, chambers of commerce, or labour groups, was the need for child care and the importance of it, that child care was the best thing we could do for economic recovery.
That is one piece of it, but I am a woman and I have children. I remember the struggle of finding child care. I remember how difficult it was to find quality child care, to be able to afford quality child care, to ensure that my children were cared for so I could return to the work force. I know for so many women across the country that this was not possible.
Having child care come forward after so many years makes me think of people like Irene Mathyssen, who pushed so hard for child care. I think about the member for Winnipeg Centre who has been absolutely tireless in this fight for child care for women. I think about these champions within the labour movement who have moved this forward over decades and decades. The fact that we now are here and have this program in place is fundamental.
I am not going to lie. This is not a perfect program. We have heard from labour leaders who say we need a workforce strategy to go along with this program. We need to ensure that the workers who are working in child care centres are adequately paid, are adequately trained and are given the resources they need so that child care spaces are available. There is a lot of work to continue to do. The idea of getting child care to people is fundamental.
The New Democrats have always known how important child care is. It is why, in my province of Alberta, Rachel Notley was the first premier to pilot a $25-a-day child care. It was wildly successful, but, of course, the Conservatives were elected under Jason Kenney and they cut that. Right now, the premiers of B.C. and Manitoba, again, New Democratic premiers, are championing and prioritizing the $10-a-day child care. Therefore, Canadians in those provinces will have that program in place.
Of course, the Conservatives in my province have, once again, fumbled the ball. As we all know, Danielle Smith would rather pick a fight with the federal government—
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- Jun/8/23 7:57:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I wanted to point out during my speech that, when Rachel Notley was elected as the premier of Alberta in 2015, she put in a pilot project for $25-a-day child care. That contributed to cutting child poverty in half in the province of Alberta during the time she was the premier. It was a pilot, and I think $10 a day is a much more reasonable cost.
We heard from chambers of commerce and the Royal Bank. Even after COVID, we heard that the best thing we could do for economic recovery in this country was provide child care to families. For Edmonton Strathcona, for Alberta and for places across this country, it is fundamental in how it will change people's lives.
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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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Madam Speaker, I apologize to my colleague for calling the member a Teletubby. I know it was meant in good fun.
In terms of the situation in Alberta, absolutely we need to make sure that all children in Alberta have access to dental care, but I think he is getting at the idea that, as a parliamentarian who loves Edmonton Strathcona, I want to make sure children in Nova Scotia, children in B.C. and children in Yukon, all of them, have access to the same dental care program, that they can all access dental care and that there are no gaps or holes that families and young children could fall through.
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- Apr/7/22 2:53:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Alberta families want to do their part to help Canada meet its emissions targets, and they deserve good-paying jobs in the new economy, yet the government continues to abandon them. Instead of diversifying our economy, the government gave billions of dollars to big oil companies on vague promises to reduce emissions. Guess what? Those billions resulted in almost no reductions.
In today's budget, will the government finally invest in Alberta workers and families?
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- Mar/24/22 11:53:12 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with the member for Vancouver Kingsway.
It is my great honour, as always, to stand in this place and address my colleagues, and I want to start by acknowledging something that I know we all know. We all know how difficult COVID-19 has been on us. We all know how hard it has been on children and we all know how hard it has been on parents and families. I am a mother myself, and to see my teenage children missing parts of their childhood and parts of their teenage years has been very hard. To be trapped in a house with a very active 14-year-old boy is not easy for any of us, and I sympathize with families across the country and around the world that have had to deal with that.
This pandemic has been very difficult on people's livelihoods and on businesses too. There are businesses in my riding that started right before the pandemic and could not access supports throughout this pandemic, and it has been heartbreaking to see that. We have seen the impacts on women, and not just women in Canada but women around the world, who have been set back decades by what has happened during this pandemic.
Of course, my heart breaks for the people who have lost their lives and for the families that have lost children, mothers, fathers, brothers or sisters. My heart breaks for them. In my province of Alberta, over 4,000 people died. That is 4,000 families. That is a massive impact in a province like Alberta.
When I think of all of these things and our best way forward and the best way we can work together to come out of COVID-19, what I keep thinking is that we cannot and we must not ever politicize something like a global health pandemic. We must listen to science. We must listen to medical professionals. I am not a doctor; that is not my role in this pandemic. My role will be to listen to doctors, to listen to scientists and to listen to experts. What I know is that experts are telling me that COVID-19 is not over.
I do want COVID-19 to be over. That is fine. However, that is not how global health pandemics work. It is not over. We have numbers spiking around the world. We have numbers spiking in places as far away as South Korea, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The numbers are climbing; the variants are developing.
I am going to talk today a bit about the need to have a global response. I do not think anyone in this place will be surprised that vaccine equity is one thing that is vitally important to me and a tool we need to use. I also want to talk a bit about what results when we politicize this pandemic, and I am going to use my province as the example for that.
Members all heard the Premier of Alberta tell us that last summer was going to be the best summer ever. My premier went so far as to print hats that said, “Best summer ever”. Do members know what it became instead? It was a cautionary tale for provinces and countries around the world. We know what happens when COVID-19 is politicized. All we have to do is look at Alberta.
Albertans have been hit hard by COVID-19, and when the premier's poll numbers were hit just as hard by his terrible decisions, he decided to do the wrong thing. He decided to politicize COVID-19. He put politics, or in this case his own political survival, ahead of the interests of Albertans. He said, “influenza...does not generally threaten life apart from the elderly and the immunocompromised”. He said it is a flu. He mimicked Donald Trump's lines and even pushed ineffective and potentially dangerous treatments.
During the third wave of COVID-19, Alberta had one of the highest infection rates in Canada. It had one of the highest infection rates in the world. This is what happens when we politicize this.
I also want to talk about an idea. I think all of us in here could recognize, at least intellectually, that if we want a global health pandemic to be over, we need to have a global response. We need to make sure vaccines are available for everyone. We cannot have a motion that asks us to ignore science and thinks that is a reasonable response to the global health pandemic.
What I would have liked to see is the Conservative Party bring forward a motion that said something like, let us update our Canadian access to medicines regime to include COVID-19 medications. Let us work together to make sure that Canada is playing an active role in waiving intellectual property rights so that countries around the world can produce their own vaccines for their own populations, and let us work with countries around the world to help with vaccine hesitancy, to make sure that when vaccines are delivered, there are supply chains, there are syringes and there are all those things that need to happen so that people can actually get vaccinated.
I would have loved, and would have been so supportive of, a Conservative motion that called for the Canadian government to finally live up to its obligations to deliver the promised doses to COVAX. COVAX is a system that was supposed to ensure that the world was vaccinated. However, that system does not work when countries such as Canada have bilateral agreements and take all of the vaccine stock, and leave countries that desperately need doses to vaccinate their health care workers and their vulnerable populations with none.
This is the opposite of a good global health response. This is the opposite of what we need to do. I have to say that I look at our response to COVID-19, and I think to myself: We face a global challenge with Ukraine. We face a fundamental global challenge with climate change, and our global responses have not lived up to that task. I worry that these are showing us what a global response will look like in the future for other challenges.
I am not a virologist. I am not an epidemiologist. I am not a physician. I am pretty sure there are few of us in this chamber who are. This motion that has been brought forward is asking us to be all of those things. It turns what should be a scientific decision into a political decision, and that is wrong. It is not up to us to make scientific decisions. It must never be our role to make scientific decisions. Our job is to develop policy and legislation that is in the best interests of Canadians.
In my province of Alberta, we have lost more than 4,000 people, and we are going to lose more. Yesterday we had 500 more cases reported, and variants continue to threaten us. Until we are able to vaccinate the world, and until Canada does its part to vaccinate the world, including by signing the TRIPS waiver, the virus is going to continue to evolve, and variants are going to continue to plague the world, including our country of Canada.
This motion asks us to give up the hope that we will get through this pandemic. This motion asks us to give up our fight against this virus. It asks us to surrender. It asks us to ignore public health and science. It asks us to pretend to know better than scientists. Canadians are better than this. We care about science. We are not about to surrender at the end. We are going to continue to care for one another.
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