Finance Committee on Sept. 20th, 2006

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Therefore, you want a budget envelope dedicated solely to education. I understand.

My second question is directed to Ms. Dionne from the Canadian Child Care Federation. I read through your submission very quickly, but I don't believe you talk about the specific situation in Quebec. You're familiar with Quebec's public day care system. I'd like to know how you feel about a situation that many Quebeckers feel is unfair. As you know, parents who have their children in day care can claim tax credits for the expenses incurred.

However, with the advent of day care services for $5, and now $7 a day, Quebec parents are eligible for a smaller tax credit that other parents, even though the pay the difference in day care costs through their taxes. This creates a problematic situation. A total of $250 million per year, or a total of $1.5 billion, has flowed into the federal government's coffers since the program's inception, while neither the Government of Quebec nor Quebeckers have seen a return on this societal imitative.

Since you are an expert on child care matters, do you think the federal government should pour any savings back into the province so that it can reinvest the money in child care services? Or, do you feel the money should remain in the consolidated revenue fund?

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Ms. Dionne, you have only a minute or two remaining.

[Yvonne Dionne]

Thank you for your question. The federation doesn't take a stand on how moneys are divided and spent. We focus on quality and early learning in child care. I think the focus would need to be on how those policies are affecting the actual quality of early learning and child care for parents and for the actual practitioners within Quebec.

I know there was some information in the news just a little while ago about how it sets up a discrepancy, and about whether parents, for example, should be encouraged to pay more than the $7 a day to support more services, including dance classes, physical activity programs, and such. If the infrastructure surrounding the core practitioner, parent, and child, and the partnership relationships there are setting up policies that put it into a disequilibrium, then I think it needs to be looked at more carefully.

We don't want one child to be experiencing one thing in one environment that another isn't because of the funding. It should be because of the parents' choice.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Mr. Del Mastro, five minutes, sir.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to start with Ms. Hill, if I could.

I was looking at your suggestions and heard the comment by Mr. McCallum, which leads me back to that question. You're aware that Budget 2006 actually removed 655,000 low-income Canadians completely from the federal tax rolls, the predominate portion of them being low-income seniors. In addition to that, we reduced the GST burden on all Canadians.

[Mary-Martha Hale]

Yes, I am aware of the reduction in the GST. But people with extremely limited incomes have less disposable income to pay GST.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Right. But the rise in the basic personal exemption, plus the additional exemption for seniors, which was doubled, actually removed 655,000 low-income Canadians from the tax rolls. It was the most significant move on taxes for low-income people in ages.

[A voice]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Yes, she is--GIS, OAS, CPP.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Please address your comments to the witnesses who are with us.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

I see your recommendations, so I'm just asking if you are actually aware of those measures in the budget.

[Marion Wright, Chair, Alliance to End Homelessness]

Thank you very much for drawing that to our attention. I think the comment made elsewhere has merit, that the majority of people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness are not seniors in our current Canadian population, although there are seniors in that age group.

The indexed groups that we are looking at are predominantly young families, children, and individuals who face a lifetime of poverty because of mental illness and addictions. They often don't live to be seniors, unfortunately.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

I'm not specifically speaking of seniors. But your actual package does point out EI, OAS, and GIS, and two of the three are seniors programs.

But it isn't just seniors. About 300,000 are seniors, but 655,000 in total fall completely off the federal tax rolls, plus there's the reduction in the GST. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of that.

[Mary-Martha Hale]

Thank you.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Ms. Dionne, you proposed something that I think some of the members on the committee will find quite troubling. It is a national discussion on family policy and developing a coordinated national family policy that will support Canada's objectives in the world.

I'm just curious. Isn't this kind of day care, child care, or whichever term you prefer to call it, provincial jurisdiction?

[Yvonne Dionne]

Yes, it certainly is. If you look at it from a person's life cycle from zero to when they're working and when they become seniors, the policies that affect the workforce in the global economy also affect the ability to move from province to province in this country.

When people move for work they often bring their children with them. Just as they expect to find a school in their new province that meets the same criteria as the school they have left, they expect to find the same child care structure there. As we know now, the quality varies considerably. Fifty per cent of Canadian children are in some form of child care between the ages of zero and six, and half of those are in unregulated settings that are not licensed. There's no sense or understanding of quality.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Right.

[Yvonne Dionne]

Of those people who are going through the system now between ages zero and twelve, in six short years the older ones will be voting and entering universities. They will be starting their own families shortly after that, so the importance of starting early across Canada with the same approach will support migration among the provinces.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

My wife is an early childhood educator, and for the life of me I can't understand why the provinces haven't put day care, as they term it, or early learning under the heading of education.

What are your feelings on why it is not classified as such?

[Yvonne Dionne]

It's an extremely good question. I do look at it that way. When we were a country that had a more rural economy, children were educated at home and learned to read almost before they could go to school. The economic reality of the time was that they needed children to go to school from September until June so they could work on the harvest. That's why we have summers off in the school system.

The economic reality now is that parents are returning to the workforce and there needs to be some kind of system to educate children beyond September to June, in the summer months we normally have off now, and extend that to a lower age because of the economic necessities. Our school system was set up with one economic necessity; we have a new one now. That may be the difference.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Agreed. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Madam Wasylycia-Leis, five minutes.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson, and thank you to all of our presenters for some very useful information this afternoon.

I think I'll begin with Mary-Martha Hale on the housing issue, because in fact I think you've identified something that is at the very heart of building a healthy society that can be competitive internationally. I think we all know the importance of putting money into housing, but what we're facing right now is in fact the possibility of a government that's not putting money into housing and is, at the same time, planning to take money out of housing and homelessness programs.

We all had a scare this summer when letters went out to these groups that were supported under SCPI, and but for a huge outcry and press conferences, we would probably have seen the death of very important programs that help deal with issues pertaining to secure housing, mental health issues, and helping women access whatever little day care there is. My question is, what can we do as a committee to both stop that hemorrhaging and do the necessary increases to provide housing for the some 1.5 million Canadians who don't have access to affordable housing?

Maybe I didn't ask the right person.

Marion.

[Marion Wright]

Thank you very much for your supportive comments.

Certainly, our undertaking and concern around the loss of the national homeless initiative and the SCPI funding this summer sent many of us as service providers into a great deal of concern.

Looking at how the government might be able to assist in this issue, because it is a national issue, even though it does have implications at the municipal and provincial levels as well, would be to initially create a housing strategy, a long-term strategy. One of the things that's been wonderful about SCPI is that it has enabled a number of things, but it doesn't offer sustainable long-term supports or housing that really will be necessary in the long term to solve the housing crisis and the homelessness situation we have here in Canada.

The second thing to do would be really to look at where there might be some small adjustments that the federal government could make that would in fact decrease the number of people living in poverty or at risk of homelessness. And there would be a number of adjustments. We talk about them specifically. Each would contribute a small amount, but collectively it would certainly help to inform and contribute to an overall reduction in homelessness.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you very much. I wish we had more time.

I'm going to go on to both Judy and Yvonne with one question that maybe you could both answer, and that is tying child care into the issues around mental health. In fact, my sense is there are so many parents, especially women, who are on the brink of very serious mental illness because of the stress they are facing trying to juggle work and family responsibilities without access to quality day care, without knowing that their kids are safe, and hearing all the time that it's their fault and their problem. We're even hearing it in this Parliament, the suggestion that we should just give money, a few bucks, to people to help whatever and never mind the need for quality, non-profit child care.

So tell me a bit more about the impact on the mental health of women and parents. Tell me a bit about what happens to women who can't find that quality day care and that safe, affordable space.