Bill C-35

Canada Early Learning and Child Care Act

An Act respecting early learning and child care in Canada

This enactment sets out the Government of Canada’s vision for a Canada-wide early learning and child care system. It also sets out the Government of Canada’s commitment to maintaining long-term funding relating to early learning and child care to be provided to the provinces and Indigenous peoples. Finally, it creates the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care.

Canada Early Learning and Child Care Act

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I would remind the member that the vaccine mandates that put ECE workers out of work in Ontario were done by the Conservative government of Doug Ford. I would encourage her to contact her colleagues in the Conservative government there to talk about what kind of redress might be available for ECE workers who had to leave their job as a result of Conservative-imposed vaccine mandates in Ontario.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, at a basic level, I struggle to understand the fairness of taxing all families and subsidizing some child care choices and not others. People make a variety of choices, and they have a variety of approaches to child care. Some of those reflect their circumstances, the kinds of jobs they have, their choices about the division of labour and these sorts of things. How is it fair that a family that does not use or is not able to access state day care should have to subsidize somebody else who made a different choice? Why do we not simply give support equally to all families and allow them to make their own choices and use those resources to facilitate those choices?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, there are two things I would say.

One is that the Harper government did do that with $100 a month, but it did not create the kinds of spaces that are required to meet demand, both for the sake of Canadian working families and for employers who want to see more workers available in the labour market.

I would add that one of the biggest beneficiaries of the child care program is actually employers. The New Democrats have been arguing for some time that Canada should not have a bottom-of-the-barrel corporate tax rate of 15%. We are quite open to the idea of having a higher corporate tax rate and ensuring that it is the employers who will be benefiting from having more workers available in the economy who are helping to pay for these child care investments.

The House resumed from June 6 consideration of Bill C-35, An Act respecting early learning and child care in Canada, as reported (with amendments) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to speak in the House of Commons and represent my constituents by lending my voice to debate on the various bills that come before this chamber. Tonight, we are talking about Bill C-35, an act respecting early learning and child care in Canada.

I have knocked on a lot of doors as a candidate and even an activist in the past. One meets a lot of people at the doors, especially in a riding like mine, which is a suburban riding full of neighbourhoods geared toward younger parents with young families. My riding is statistically younger than the average in Canada, and it is full of homes geared toward families with children. I see a lot of parents and kids at the doors.

Parents and families are under a lot of pressure. We are in the midst of a cost of living crisis. We are in an inflation crisis, where food, transportation, housing, all these things, are ever more expensive. The government has done many things to make these things more expensive, such as the carbon tax, which basically raises the price of everything, but especially food and transportation, whether it is gasoline, bus passes or the way that transportation costs inflate everything. Child care is, of course, among the many ever-increasing expenses that parents face.

When I knock on a door, I never know what I am walking into. Every political candidate here knows the experience, knocking on doors down the whole street, when we get to a door where a young parent answers with a toddler in one arm and a couple more active kids in the house. We may be getting them in a moment of stress. They will talk about a lot of things that make life stressful for parents, such as affordability.

I do not know that I have talked to a parent at a door who said what they really need is a bill that will declare things like quality, availability, affordability, accessibility, inclusiveness and create a new board that would report to a minister. They just want to know that they have access to a child care space. More often, it is a more general sense of financial relief they are looking for; of course, child care is a big piece of this for many families. The bill that we are debating tonight does not offer much in the way of relief from the financial stress and strain that parents are facing and the ability to have confidence in knowing that there will be child care space. Saying the word “availability” does not create child care space.

If one flips through the pages of this bill, there is really not a whole lot here. There are a few pages of throat clearing, definitions and things like that. We get down to its purpose and declarations, where it boldly states the government's “vision for a Canada-wide, community-based early learning and child care system and its commitment to ongoing collaboration with the provinces and Indigenous peoples to support them in their efforts”. It goes on with this talk of goals. I suppose it is good to have goals. If I were a motivational speaker, I guess I would encourage people that way. However, just stating that one has goals is not going to create a child care space, and neither will this bill.

The funding principles that are stated here enshrine in law the government's agreements that it has already entered into with the various provinces and territories. These agreements exist separately, and this bill just talks about them and their principles.

One principle the Liberals are quite clear on is that the only model of child care they really want to address, through not only this bill but also their entire program and the agreements they have entered into, is government and non-profit child care, which would exclude many parents and many entrepreneurs, who happen to almost always be women, operating existing child care facilities.

There are many models of child care that are, at best, not affected at all by this bill, but at worst, they are threatened or challenged by this bill. That came out in testimony when this bill was discussed at the committee stage. The one concrete thing this bill does is establish a national advisory council on early learning and child care. They have created a board. I do not think that is something that will do anything to create child care spaces that do not exist.

We know the Liberals like boards. They give them an outlet for them to appoint their friends. We have seen this before. They can appoint defeated Liberal candidates, Liberal donors or any of their friends. It comes in handy for the Liberals to have their friends appointed to various boards. We see that rather shockingly working itself out with the appointment of the special rapporteur.

This bill would not do anything for Canadians who cannot access spaces. This bill would help some families who already have access, and those families are benefiting from the government's vision for child care. They are having their costs reduced.

There is an entire other set of parents and children who do not have access. We have entire provinces that have virtually no child care. They have been called “child care deserts”. It has been remarked upon how many people in Saskatchewan have no access to a child care space. There is nothing in this bill that would address that.

It may even harm some of the entrepreneurs, as I said, who have existing businesses who do not fall within this model. Newfoundland and Labrador is another province we heard, during the committee study, has limitations of space that nothing in this bill would address.

It is easy to say the word “accessibility”. It is easy to say the words “affordability”, “quality” and “inclusivity”. However, it is hard to see these spaces created and brought into existence. There are too many Canadians who are left out by this bill.

It is a shame about the sensible amendments. They may have helped modify the principles of the bill to make it more inclusive of different models of child care across Canada. That sadly did not happen. We are left with a bill that is full of promise, but short on actual substance to improve the lives of Canadian families.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, after listening to the member, one draws the conclusion that he does not support the legislation, yet I suspect that the Conservative Party, when it comes down to it, will likely be voting in favour of it.

As much as the member was so critical of the legislation, we recognize that there are Conservative premiers, premiers from coast to coast, saying that the $10 day care and the national plan that we put into place is working. We are getting more day care spots. We are seeing the reduction to $10-a-day child care.

Is he going to vote in favour of the legislation? Does he not support $10-a-day day care?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, there is something of a false premise there, which is that this bill would suddenly conjure $10-a-day child care for everybody. That is not what this bill would do.

The member asked me a direct question about support for this bill, and I will point out to him that I voted for this bill at second reading. I supported this bill going to committee, where it could have been improved through committee study. It was very disappointing that members of the government caucus who are on that committee were not open to amendments. Ironically, the Bloc members, the separatist party members, were prepared to work with Conservatives to improve a bill on a national, federal program.

There were members at committee prepared to make this bill better. I continue to wrestle with rewarding the failure of the Liberal government to fulfill the objectives of the bill, yet I do support the objective of having child care that is available for Canadians, affordable and high-quality.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Uqaqtittiji, what I like about this bill, and I have spoken to this a few times and have raised questions about it as well, is that it enshrines into legislation the importance of indigenous people's rights, as well as enshrining international instruments, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

I wonder if the member agrees that enshrining these international instruments is very important in ensuring that our children are getting the best quality care, which they deserve?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, that is just it. It is about the actual care and quality of care for the children. Most parents, given the choice between a bill that enshrines principles and a day care space that is affordable, would probably choose the affordable day care space.

Again, this is what we often see with the Liberal government and the bills it introduces. The Liberals want to be rewarded for the intentions of their bills rather than their ability to execute and achieve the outcomes they state.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my colleague a question. He is from the opposite side of Calgary on the diagonal, and his riding is very similar to my own. Like me, he knocks on a lot of doors during election time.

I have never heard a constituent of mine tell me that they wanted to see a bill passed that created a commission or a national council, where people would be paid to talk about an issue as opposed to addressing the issue and dealing with it directly. The member did go through the legislation, and I wonder if he could comment on that.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, that is exactly my point. The member is correct that the one concrete thing this bill does is create a commission and paid positions for people to talk about child care. I do not see a specific, real, true strategy to deliver on the objectives stated in the legislation.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am always pleased to rise in the House to speak on behalf of my constituents, and today we are debating Bill C-35, an act respecting early learning and child care.

I spoke on this bill at second reading, before it went to committee. After reviewing my comments from my previous speech, I do not see many improvements that would address the very important concerns I have with this legislation.

From the outset, I want to affirm that Conservatives support making child care more affordable for families. That is why, back in 2006, our Conservative government created the universal child care benefit, which put money directly in families' pockets to spend on their priorities. At the time, the Liberals claimed that families would just spend it on beer and popcorn, but they have since come around to our position with their improved Canada child benefit, which combined a number of already existing child care benefits, including the Conservative universal child care benefit, under one program.

The Liberals have moved forward with their new Canada-wide early learning and child care initiative. In budget 2021 it was projected to cost $25 billion, at least, over five years. Now, due to record-high inflation and high demand for limited, affordable child care spaces and limited professional child care workers, this number has undoubtedly become far larger.

I would remind the House that this program is being funded entirely by borrowed money, and the cost of these Liberal deficits and higher interest rates means that, for every billion dollars borrowed, they will pay an additional $45 million in interest every year.

I am very excited to see the new movie Oppenheimer. Thinking about that movie got me thinking about the brilliant Albert Einstein. Einstein is reported to have said that the eighth wonder of the world is compound interest. Those who understand it will receive it, and those who do not understand it will pay it. I do not think the Liberal government understands it because compound interest is truly a powerful force.

As the Liberals borrow billions more each year to fund their programs, that interest compounds. At the current interest rates of 4.5% for Canada government bonds, the interest cost for a plan that costs a billion a year will exceed and rise exponentially as long the government borrows year after year. These deficits are radically increasing the interest costs Canadian taxpayers will have to pay. Eventually, this debt has to be repaid. It is Canadians and the economy that will suffer because the government will either have to borrow more or tax Canadians more to pay for it.

We have always given the Liberals a hard time. We have called them the tax-and-spend Liberals, but today we have something that is far worse. We have the borrow-and-spend Liberals. At least with the tax-and-spend Liberals, they would go out and raise taxes to try to gather money to pay for their programs. With the borrow-and-spend Liberals, they conjure this money out of thin air. They create new money in the system.

This creates inflation in two ways. By competing for capital in the economy, they raise the cost of everything from mortgages to business lines of credit, which thus raises the cost of owning a home, running a business and many other things. The second way it creates inflation is when they spend that money. When government spends the money it borrowed, it is competing with consumers and businesses for goods and services, which raises the cost of everything.

The Liberal child care plan is proving to be not only an expensive failure, but also extraordinarily inflationary. I have spent the last two years, since the government brought forward this program, consulting with families and child care operators. Very few of them have anything good to say about these programs. While some families have benefited from lower child care costs, there are at least tens of thousands of Canadian children who are stuck on waiting lists. Some of them have been stuck on these waiting list for years. Their children will be in kindergarten before a spot ever opens up, if it ever does, so they will not benefit from this program.

The guiding principles under section 7 about funding in this bill say that this program must be accessible, affordable and inclusive. The program has been implemented over the past couple of years. It is still in the process of being fully implemented, but looking at the outcome of what we have seen so far, the program, as it stands, is not accessible. At least 50% of families have not been able to access an affordable care space. It is not affordable because those families that cannot access a space are still paying the full unsubsidized price for child care, and it is certainly not inclusive because these families are from all sorts of communities.

Because this is a universal child care plan, it does not matter if a family earns hundreds of thousands of dollars a year or a family is below the poverty line. There is no consideration for lower-income families or special dispensation for these families, so what we are seeing is that marginalized communities are being further marginalized by being excluded from programs. As such, on its own principles, the government is failing to achieve what it said its principles are.

The government also said under paragraph 7(1)(b) of this legislation that the bill must provide access that enables “families of all income levels, including low incomes, to benefit”. Before the implementation of the Liberal early learning and child care plan, many families across Canada already benefited from subsidy programs provided by their municipalities and provincial governments. These low-income families were paying far less for child care than the top rate that most middle-income and upper-income families were paying. These families were already benefiting from government subsidies in some form or another. However, because the government has implemented a universal system that does not take into account means testing of income, we have a flood of people from middle- and upper-income families taking spots in the system, and low-income families that could get subsidized spots in the system are no longer benefiting from these spots. Therefore, on another principle of this legislation, the government's already existing child care plan is failing.

Statistics show that the demographics of people who were already accessing child care in this country before the implementation of this Liberal plan were primarily middle- and upper-income families. Those middle- and upper-income families that already had a child care space are the primary beneficiaries, because they never had to wait on a waiting list since they already had a child care space. When the government took the $1,500 a month families were paying and brought it down to $500 a month, it was putting $1,000 a month in the pockets of primarily middle- and upper-income families.

This fails on the standard and principle of creating equity and fairness, because we know that inflation impacts lowest-income families the most. Lowest-income families spend proportionally more of their income on things like shelter and housing, transportation, food and other things. As such, when these families do not get access to child care, they continue to spend a lot of money. When higher-income families get access to these government subsidies, which they are currently, they get extra money in their pockets and spend it on things that are not necessarily shelter or necessities because they are of higher income and it is a lower proportion. They are spending money on more restaurants, a new vehicle or maybe a bigger house. As we are seeing, these are areas where inflation is really rising in this country.

This is another example that demonstrates the inflationary power of the government's legislation. The people who are being hurt the most are the lower-income families, because the prices of things are being pushed further and further beyond their reach.

I spoke to child care operators and asked what the biggest problem they are facing is, and they said labour is the biggest problem. They said to me that currently in Ontario the most they can pay a child care operator is $25 an hour. That is annualized at about $48,000 a year. There was a woman working at a day care centre who has been working there for 30 years, and she is getting paid $25 an hour. She is making less today, after inflation, than she was making when she started 30 years ago. For a high school or university graduate coming straight out of school, an entry-level job in the federal government will pay around $48,000.

A 30-year professional child care operator under this Liberal plan, which the Liberals say will raise wages somewhat, is making less than an entry-level worker for the federal government, and with competition for labour, they are losing people left, right and centre. They cannot retain people, and because of the restrictions and regulations the government has put in place under this legislation, they cannot compete for this labour. Their hands are tied and they are losing staff, which means losing capacity and increasing wait-lists. This is an unfolding disaster that families are seeing across Canada.

Finally, the child care director told me that the reason families cannot get spots is that the government has capped the number of spots it will fund. These families cannot get spots because the government is choosing not to fund them. The government is responsible for the wait-lists we are seeing in this country.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I have two quick quotes, one from Canada's most populated province. “I'm so proud of the work we've done with our federal partners to land an agreement that will lower costs for families across the province.” This is from Doug Ford, who happens to be the Premier of Ontario. Here is another quote: “Our government is proud to work in partnership with Canada to strengthen and grow Manitoba's early learning and childcare system in all communities of our province.” This is from Heather Stefanson, the Conservative Premier of Manitoba, my home province.

The Conservatives like to bad-talk the legislation, yet at second reading they voted in favour of it. Chances are they are going to vote in favour of it at third reading.

Will the hon. member clarify this for those who are following the debate. Have the Conservatives made up their mind? Do they know what they are going to do at third reading? We understand they do not like it, but will they vote against it?

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is always great to see politicians stand up in the House and quote other politicians who are patting each other on the back about how wonderful the things they have done are. However, do members know who I really want to hear from? I want to hear from the families that have been waiting for two years on a waiting list. They are literally calling child care centres several times a week to ask if they have an opening yet. They are being told there is a 700-child wait-list.

I want to hear less from government members about patting each other on the back over how wonderful a job they are doing, and I want to hear what their constituents are telling them about these massive wait-lists, which are only being exacerbated by the government's failure.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately the member is going to be upset when I quote another politician to him. He is a member of Parliament from Alberta, as I am, so I just want to flag for him that in 2021, Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta, wrote before she was premier, “‘How could we sign a deal like this?’.... It's not too late to change course”. Of course, after she was in the election campaign recently, that changed. She then said that she was very proud of the $10-a-day day care plan, and she in fact took credit for it. We can see how Albertans would be very confused.

I would like to know, like the member from the Liberal Party, where the Conservative Party of Canada stands on this. Are Conservatives also confused? Are we also to expect that they will say one thing when they are in the House and another thing when they are campaigning? Where do they stand on this bill? Will they support child care for Canadians? Will he support child care for Albertans by voting for this bill?