- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Churchill—Keewatinook Aski
- Manitoba
- Voting Attendance: 61%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $142,937.96
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, clearly, we need to work very closely with early childhood education workers and the sector to make sure fair wages are prioritized. We need to ensure there is dedicated funding for that and that there is oversight of this very important fact. We also need to invest in ECE education and make sure we are attracting and retaining the best. For the people who are already doing this work, we need to make sure we are continuing to invest in—
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Madam Speaker, if the member had been here during the first two years of my twins' life, she would have seen them in the House as well, prior to Zoom.
For us, in the NDP, what is really important is universal access and that we make sure all families have access to affordable child care no matter where they live. We obviously need to have special recognition of the barriers facing low-income families and women who are facing economic hardship. Today's legislation is an important step in that direction.
We need to make sure there is adequate funding, which also involves making sure ECE workers, many of them also mothers who need child care, have a living wage, and we need to make sure we are making the necessary investments in the program.
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Madam Speaker, I want to acknowledge the minister's work on this critical piece of legislation. I know it has been very important for us to work with the minister and make sure the government lives up to the vision that, as the minister pointed out, so many advocates have fought for for years.
We are, absolutely, already seeing positive impacts when it comes to investment in child care. In fact, just a couple of months ago, my neighbour across the street, also the mother of twins, ran over to tell me that her family was one of the ones that were going to be able to get reduced child care fees as a result of our actions in Parliament. I was so proud that this was already making a difference here in Manitoba, in the north, where our child care needs are significant. We are known as being in a child care desert here, given the demands of our communities.
I also want to acknowledge that much work needs to be done when it comes to making sure there is adequate child care in indigenous communities, some of the youngest communities in the country, with a real lack of infrastructure. I am looking forward—
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Madam Speaker, I am honoured to speak in the House in support of a historic piece of legislation, Bill C-35.
I want to begin by acknowledging the hard work of my colleague, the member for Winnipeg Centre, who has worked tirelessly on this bill and who has worked alongside our team to push the Liberals to create a stronger version of this bill on behalf of children, families, Canadian women and all of us.
For me, child care hits close to home. As many of us know, and as my constituents certainly know, I am the proud mother of five-year-old twins. I, like many mothers in Canada, faced real challenges when it came to accessing child care after I had my kids.
I was on a waiting list for child care in Ottawa for over two years, and then, of course, as soon as COVID hit and, knowing that our child care needs had entirely shifted to my constituency here in Manitoba, I was again on a waiting list, and of course, like all families, I faced the insecurities and disruptions caused by the pandemic.
Many who may have tuned into our online sittings throughout that time would have seen one or even both of my children popping up on Zoom during working hours, because that is what it was like to work from home with kids at home without access to child care.
While I treasure the time with my kids, as many mothers know, juggling all of that without access to child care when we want it and when we need it can be a real nightmare.
The reality is that the lack of access to child care in Canada has absolutely held women back and held families back. This legislation is an important step in standing up for women in our country, for families and for a better future for all of our children.
As I begin this speech, I want to say that this victory would not have happened without the decades of activism, of work that has been done by women across our country.
I want to acknowledge the groundbreaking work of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, with leaders like Judy Rebick. I want to acknowledge the many activists involved in the national action committee throughout the country, including people like my mother, Hariklia Dimitrakopoulou-Ashton, who has certainly shaped who I am and who was part of an organization that made it very clear that equality for women and justice for women means child care.
I also want to acknowledge the many women in the labour movement who have tirelessly fought for decades for access to universal, affordable not-for-profit child care. They include leaders like Barb Byers, Vicky Smallman and Bea Bruske, the current CLC president, and her team.
I want to acknowledge women across the country who have made it their aim to speak and fight for child care. In B.C., they are people like Sharon Gregson. Many women here in Manitoba have been part of this fight. Martha Friendly and many more have fought for child care for decades. They and many others are the reason we are standing here today.
I also want to acknowledge a former colleague who is in the news a fair bit right now and who I think many of us hope will soon be the mayor of Toronto, former New Democrat MP Olivia Chow, who, when she was in Parliament, fought tirelessly for child care. She was the first to propose an early learning and child care program for Canadians. Her leadership created the framework for a universal, high-quality, affordable and not-for-profit national child care program.
New Democrats have long called for universal early learning and child care in this country, and it has been a long road to get the other parties on board. I am thinking of long negotiations just to include this in the supply and confidence agreement with the Liberals. Our demands that this be implemented by the end of the year are the reason we are here, and I am proud that due to NDP pressures, we will see this bill adopted before the end of 2023.
Let us look at the figures. Roughly half of Canadian children under six years old do not have access to either licensed or even unlicensed child care. This impacts primarily women, delaying their capacity to return to work at a time of their choosing. Of the women in families that do not have access to child care, 42% end up postponing their return to work.
This is unacceptable. Our current piecemeal system leaves far too many women without the choice to decide for themselves, ourselves, when we can go back to work. Those lost years mean less income for women and fewer opportunities for promotions and furthering careers. It means being punished for starting families.
Every day that we do not have an early learning and child care program in Canada is a day when Canada shows the extent to which it devalues women and how little it wants us to succeed. Let us be clear. The provinces know this. Everyone in the House knows this. We have had commission after commission and report after report. Over half a century ago, the Royal Commission on the Status of Women identified publicly funded universal child care as one of 167 recommendations. For over 30 years, we have heard Liberal promises around child care. It was just around the corner, red book after red book and often heard about during the election, only to have the Liberals complain how hard it was to enact when they got into government.
Far too many women are waiting for far too many men, and some women, to figure out how to treat us with basic dignity and respect. Whether it is our earning power's resembling that of our male counterparts, our capacity to live safely and without fear of violence, equitable abortion access in communities in rural and northern parts of our country, or access to child care, women in Canada are tired of having to prove their basic humanity.
This bill is important, and no one should diminish that. Every parent across Canada deserves access to affordable, accessible, high-quality child care. This bill would enshrine this vision in law and would commit the federal government to long-term funding for provinces and indigenous communities. This bill sets out the vision for a national early learning and child care system and the principles guiding federal investment in that system.
Speaking of funding, we need to be clear. There needs to be long-term, sustainable core funding directed at not-for-profit, accessible and universal child care programs. We need to make sure that ECE workers, who are incredible individuals and amongst the most patient people I know, make a living wage and beyond for the work they do. We need to make sure there is investment in infrastructure. I am thinking of indigenous communities here in our region, with some of the youngest populations in our country, that do not have access to adequate day care spaces. We need to make sure the federal government works with first nations, with Inuit communities and with indigenous communities across the country to make sure adequate child care centres are being built.
It is important to acknowledge that this bill would establish a national advisory council on early learning and child care and set out reporting requirements on the progress being made regarding national child care and the federal investments being made in the system.
Finally, it is meant to contribute toward the realization of the right to child care services, which is recognized in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This bill acknowledges Canada's international obligations under the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and to the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, as well as that a national child care system must respect the rights of indigenous peoples as affirmed by the Constitution Act of 1982.
Today's work in Parliament and the passing of Bill C-35 is nothing short of historic, but we need to make sure that subsequent governments live up to their obligations in this bill and ensure that there is adequate funding to invest in our most prized resource: our children and our future.
I end by thanking those who have come before us: the feminists, the women, the many people who fought for this day to be a reality and who will continue to fight to make sure that children, women, all of us, get the chance and the support that we all deserve.
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Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise in the House given the support that we in the NDP have given to this important legislation.
We know that work needs to be done to improve it, but it is really hard to take anybody from the Conservative Party seriously who is critical of moving forward toward universal, affordable child care. It is a party that, when it was in government, waged a war on women. It cut the status of women department, cut programming when it came to women, refused to implement an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, and did nothing to advance the desperate need for child care that women face in our country.
This legislation is critical to lifting Canadian women up. Despite the rhetoric from the Conservative leadership, let it be known to Canadians today that the Conservatives do not want to lift Canadian women up and ensure that there is affordable, accessible child care in our country for all of us.
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