Hi. My name is Monica Lysack. I'm the executive director of the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada.
The CCAC was founded in 1983 to promote quality, inclusive, publicly funded, non-profit child care accessible to all. The association's membership reaches more than four million Canadians, including parents, caregivers, researchers, and students, as well as women's, anti-poverty, labour, social justice, disability, and rural organizations.
In order for Canada to prosper in the world of the future, it's necessary that we invest in our own potential. It is especially critical that we offer adequate support to ensure that children acquire the foundations for lifelong health, learning, and skill development. As is already recognized in most other developed countries, quality child care programs help build these foundations and also support the ongoing learning, skill development, and labour-force attachment of parents.
Public investments that improve access to quality child care services are affordable because these benefits significantly outweigh the costs involved. As it conducts the 2006 pre-budget consultations with a clear focus on Canada's place in a competitive world, we offer the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance the following points and recommendations:
First, quality child care services support children, families, and communities, and the economy and will improve Canada's competitive stance with peer nations.
Second is a qualifier. The benefits from child care will only be realized through a focused public investment strategy that ensures that families have access to quality services.
Third, to build the child care system that Canadians want and need, the CCAC calls on the federal government to restore and increase sustained long-term federal funding to the provinces and territories. Federal transfers must be specifically dedicated to improving and expanding child care services based on provincial and territorial plans to advance quality, inclusion, and affordability. The briefing note submitted to this committee, and available on the CCAC website, elaborates on each of these points. I'd just like to highlight a few.
As a society, Canada invests less in child care services than most other developed countries. In fact, there is an OECD study being released this week in Italy that shows a table with Canada at the bottom with the lowest investment of the countries profiled. That's why our patchwork of services ranks poorly in international comparisons, and most importantly, why it fails to meet children's and families' needs. To address this concern, the federal government has announced a child care spaces initiative, which they indicate will have incentives that are flexible enough to meet the needs of all families and that will work for all sizes and types of employers. This is taken from the universal child care website.
What is the price tag for this all-encompassing initiative? The federal government's website indicates a financial commitment of $250 million each year over the next five years. On its own, it's a bargain by international standards for achieving such far-reaching objectives. What that website doesn't clearly say is that this $250 million annual budget replaces previously committed and dedicated federal child care funds of $1.2 billion, for a net loss, a cut, of $950 million.
The mismatch between this initiative's goals and financial reality reaches mythic proportions. Although the federal government will provide only 38% of the funds that are flowing to communities now, and 21% of what was committed to communities for 2007, through this initiative the federal government claims it will meet the needs of all families, regardless of their hours of work and whether they live in cities, small towns, or rural areas. It will work with the business community, non-profit organizations, employers, and provincial and territorial governments to ensure that the initiative complements what is already in place.
There is no evidence here to support children's healthy development or to guarantee standards for quality.
With these cuts, $212 million from Quebec, $352 million from Ontario—you see the pattern—we're going backwards from what the OECD has recommended.
Therefore the CCAC calls on the federal government to adopt the recommendations in our brief: to restore and increase sustained, long-term federal funding to the provinces and territories, enact legislation, replace the capital incentives for child care spaces with dedicated capital transfers to the provinces and territories, and provide effective income supports for Canadian families.
Thank you.