Finance Committee on Oct. 6th, 2006

[An hon. member]

Depreciation.

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

Depreciation.

This really gives investment back, because you're sure it's a tax break that you give to enterprises that invest in their future and in the future of the economy. But frankly, if I give a tax break to an American CEO that comes to Motorola.... I was working in Motorola before. When their mandate is finished, they go back to the United States. They're doing nothing here.

Don't you think it would be more productive?

[Graham Starmer]

No.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you.

Okay, we continue with Michael Savage.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you, again.

I'm going to go back to the issue of the dedicated transfer. In my view, there are two things. One, the most important recommendation the committee should make to the government is how do we get a handle on post-secondary education?

Secondly.... We have four people from distinguished institutions, so I want your opinion on this. I haven't got a lot of time, but I want to try to be as specific as possible.

Judy indicated that the percentage of post-secondary funding from the federal government has declined to single digits. In fact, it stayed constant, and those are numbers from the government's budget document, but it's been taken from that allocation to the provinces. Lloyd indicated that some of it goes to research. We set up the millennium scholarship, learning bonds, and all that sort of thing. So if we do a dedicated transfer.... I brought this to a Liberal policy convention last March, and got it passed as a priority resolution. So I support the dedicated transfer.

I have two concerns. One, a dedicated transfer does not do anything to close the inequities in Canada between a province like Nova Scotia and a province like Alberta, which can afford a lot more now than Nova Scotia can. If there are dedicated transfers per capita, then I assume it won't close that gap. It also won't allow us to target specific areas that are a problem, like the aboriginal communities in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but I do want to try to get a succinct recommendation from you guys. The choice is a dedicated transfer.... And negotiating with the provinces is not all that easy. We did it in health, but it didn't come without a certain amount of blood on the floor. So the choice is either a dedicated transfer and allow the provinces a large amount of control, or the federal government saying they are going to continue to invest in research and innovation and they're going to go directly to students, particularly, as Dr. Axworthy indicated, not to lower tuition overall but specifically to help aboriginal Canadians, low-income families, and persons with disabilities.

I would like your views. I'll start with Jeff.

[Jeff Zabudsky]

I would suggest that it would be the former rather than the latter, a dedicated transfer to the provinces, negotiating with them, in consultation with the institutions, around setting some targets and some goals, goals that have national interests, national standards. Many of those having to do with aboriginal student skills are very much in the national interest.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Would you leave the millennium scholarship and research as it is now, or would you roll all that in, cancel those out, and let the provinces decide?

[Jeff Zabudsky]

I would...[Technical difficulty--Editor]

[Lloyd Axworthy]

I have one comment.

When you use a dedicated transfer, it can have different equations to it. One equation can be a base transfer, not based on population per se but on a series of criteria. Secondly, you could have a component that is clearly income support for students in need. Third could be a transfer that's based on targeted priorities that the federal government could set commensurate with its own responsibilities, such as those in the federal jurisdiction. Then you have a dedicated transfer that has a proper formula to it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Louis, do you want to comment?

[Dr. Louis Visentin]

I think a dedicated transfer is a good way to go, with targets. In 1983 the Liberal government at the time announced a research strategy to be biotech information technology and material. We had no biotech industry in the country. They targeted both the physical infrastructure and the development of human expertise. We've got 500 companies in this country that we didn't have in 1983. So this kind of targeting is possible.

The government is saying that this is where they want to go, and then saying to the universities that they need this much for infrastructure, this much for training, and this much if you want to target aboriginals for access education. But we need some specific targeting so that we have an idea and can make sure the strategy is achieved.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

We'll conclude with our final questioner for this panel, who is Mr. Tweed.

Welcome, sir.

[Merv Tweed, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, witnesses, for your presentations today.

This is my first pre-budget meeting, and what I seem to be hearing is that over the past several years the federal government has gotten into negotiations with provinces, universities, municipalities, and cities. I think what we've seen is that the line of responsibility and the line of where funding should go and how it should be applied has become so blurred that we don't really even understand how the funding happens and how the funding is disbursed.

I've spoken to a lot of people whose greatest fear is that every time an announcement is made of transfers of funding to the provinces, they'll take that amount out of the province's current budget and backfill it with the amount that's being sent over by the federal government.

I think that has created the need for dedicated funding. You get into jurisdictional arguments all the time with provinces. We saw that in the recent health announcement by the previous government--$41 billion and no accountability or no outcome results that we can measure to see if the money actually did what it was intended to do.

My question for all of you--and I think it could be answered very quickly--is this. Would you agree that the lines of responsibility have to be re-established between the federal government and other jurisdictions and also maintained?

[Dr. Emõke Szathmáry]

I would agree to that, and I think Mr. Savage set up a false dichotomy. I don't think there can be any backtracking on the research front, especially when we're talking technology transfer in the four primary areas in Canada that are regarded as particularly important.

But I think with reference to the main mission of universities, which is to educate--mine has a dual-pronged one, to do research as well as educate broadly--lines are blurred. If we don't have the funds to do that primary educational responsibility, we won't even have the people to do the research. I really do think you've put it properly.

As to what is done within that in terms of targeted sectors and so forth, there are any number of ways of doing that, but I do think that the research funding has to, at the minimum, be maintained, but then there have to be clear lines of responsibility in terms of institutions' missions to educate.

[Graham Starmer]

I tend to agree very wholeheartedly with that. When we talk to many non-profit organizations and groups that receive funding from a whole multitude of sources, frequently they feel that the lines are confusing. Not just in education, but in a lot of other areas, I think those lines have to be made very clear.

[Lorne Boguski]

I found the discussions with the universities and their needs very interesting. I've been in the field of education for some 40 years.

But let us not forget that those students have to come from somewhere. They come from municipalities, and we as municipalities are continually being asked to do more and more for our citizens. We're into such things as making sure they have safe potable water and looking after recreation, wellness, health, doctor recruitment, economic development--all those issues. We want our students to come back to our communities. Yes, they are going to be educated, but they have to come back, and as municipalities, we have to have something for them.

What we're asking is this. We require long-term predictable funding so that municipalities can do the things they have to do in order to keep our young people coming back to our communities. This is extremely important. This is the one message we do want to give you. We require long-term predictable funding like the gas tax. That's an excellent program. We want that to continue and others like it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you, Mr. Tweed.

Thank you to all the members of the panel for your fine presentations. We appreciate your time and the effort you've put into participating in this process today.

I'll invite the next panel to make their way up and replace the panel that we have here now.

We'll suspend for five minutes only. Then we'll recommence.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

We'll recommence.

We are giving priority to our panel. Welcome, panellists. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you for the work you put into preparing your briefs. Thank you for providing us with an opportunity to participate with you in making recommendations to the upcoming federal budget. It's wonderful to see you. It's a great day and it's nice to have you here with us.

We are going to hold you to the times that we've asked you to stick to on your presentations because we want to make sure we allow time for exchanges with the panel members thereafter, and also because some of these people, believe it or not, after having flown 10,000 miles this week, have to fly again to get home for the Thanksgiving weekend. So we're going to start right away and get right into it.

We'll begin with Donna Riddell, from the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada. Welcome, Donna. You have two and a half minutes. I'll give you a sign when you have a minute to go, just so I don't have to cut you off in mid-sentence. When I indicate your time is almost over, just wind up your presentation, and we'll move on, so that everybody has a chance.

Thank you, Donna, and welcome.

[Donna Riddell, Manitoba, Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada]

Good morning.

Thank you for the opportunity to present to you today. I'm Donna Riddell. I live in Miami, Manitoba, with my husband and four daughters. I'm also the board representative to the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada.

Quality child care services support children, families, communities, and the economy, and will improve Canada's competitive stance with peer nations. I'm here to say that child care in rural areas of central Manitoba does work for our families. Child care provides an essential service to my family. In 1996 my husband was self-employed, and I needed to re-enter the workforce. I needed to find child care for my two daughters. I tried local home-based child care, and while families have been lucky enough to find competent care, I was not so lucky. I hired someone to come to my home, and this was inconsistent. I had three different people who took turns providing care.

In discussion, I and other parents in Miami saw a need for child care in our community. That led to the development and building of the Miami Children's Facility. Governed by a local board of directors, this facility continues to be successful, using an integrated service delivery model. It has been vital, since the beginning, for this facility to provide inclusive services for both working and stay-at-home families. Quality child care with extended flexible hours, family resources, and nursery school programs are a few of the priorities of this facility.

Many other rural communities have developed and built their own child care programs tailored to meet their needs. With the support of grants, land donations, municipalities, bankers, and good luck, they have been successful. There are families who have moved to rural communities because of this provision of child care.

Community businesses have been able to retain a more secure workforce, farmers have been able to farm safely, centres provide employment opportunities, employees are able to increase their skills by taking training volunteer boards of directors also develop their skills, and rural children deserve early childhood education. Quality child care programs provide many developmental benefits. These benefits, however, will only be realized through a focused public investment strategy, ensuring that families have access to quality services. The child care space initiative will not succeed in rural areas. Rural communities do not have businesses willing or able to take advantage of any tax breaks to create new child care spaces.

Capital funding is needed for rural child care programs. Ongoing operating costs need to be covered, especially in rural communities, to compensate for the seasonal peaks and valleys in enrolment. Subsidy for rural families is critical. The farm economy, as you know, is quite dismal; also, lower incomes quite often are common in the rural setting.

Therefore, CCAAC calls on this federal government to adopt the recommendations in our briefing to restore and increase long-term sustained funding to provinces and territories, to enact legislation to replace the capital incentives for child care spaces with dedicated capital transfers to the provinces and territories, and to provide effective income supports for Canadian families.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you very much, Ms. Riddell, for your presentation. Well done.

We'll continue with SpeciaLink and Debra Mayer. Welcome.

[Debra Mayer, Project Manager, SpeciaLink]

Thank you very much.

In my two and a half minutes I'm going to talk quickly and hope that you've had a chance to read the full brief.

I want to focus on the fact that in a time of increasing labour shortages it's very ironic that a significant subset of the Canadian population eager and ready to work is doubly ghettoized. To explain, I want to tell you a story of long ago.

My Uncle Morris moved to the local institution in Portage La Prairie when he was 12 years old, much against the wishes of my grandmother. She was an immigrant and a single parent whose husband abandoned her and three small children at a time long before welfare, child care, or the community living movement. The doctor said to send him away when he was just a baby, but my grandmother tried for years to keep him at home with her while she worked in a factory to support her family. As he grew up, he was harder to provide for, and there was no help in the community. That was in the 1930s, and he came to live here in Portage La Prairie in 1942.

I've spent the past six years working for Community Living Manitoba, with parents of children with intellectual disabilities and the early childhood workforce who help them care for their children. For the past year I've worked for SpeciaLink, the National Centre for Child Care Inclusion, where we continue to hear the stories shared by parents of children with disabilities, like the single mother in Whitehorse who dropped out of a training program that would have brought her economic self-sufficiency because the child care program couldn't meet the catheterization needs of her child. A different northern community lost its only doctor because the community could not meet the special needs of his child.

Our research has shown that a significant percentage of parents of children with disabilities are unemployed, underemployed, or work part time because of the demands of their children's disability or health condition. Thirty-nine per cent report their employment status has been affected. Forty-six per cent say their work schedule has been affected. Sixty-eight per cent turn down overtime. Sixty-four per cent of two-parent families with one parent unemployed report that their child's special needs are the major factor in their family's unemployment. Mothers' employment is far more likely to be affected by their children's need for care and support and the extra logistics of balancing work and family.

We can support these families in regard to the many workforce barriers they face, and provide inclusive early education for their children. But SpeciaLink recommends that, in order to so, the federal government prioritize investments in building an inclusive children's public policy agenda in order to meet the social development needs and aspirations of children with disabilities and their families. We also encourage this government to develop specific policies that affect availability and access for children and parents, and policies that ensure all programs are physically accessible, with design features appropriate for care.

In budget 2007, we encourage you to move past tax measures and concentrate on sustained multi-year program expenditures focused on early childhood. And we ask you to track the impact of your policy decisions, particularly on these indicators: the number of children with special needs who are attending child care programs; the evidence of children with their range of needs and levels of disability being meaningfully included; the number of centres accepting children with disabilities; we know that about 40% of centres in Canada aren't able to include kids with disabilities because of the lack of resources they have; we have a high incidence of children with special needs being turned down and expelled from children's programs because of a very under-resourced system; and finally, we ask you to measure the quality-inclusive indicators and quality improvement over time so that we can really see the impact of policy decisions in the long term.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Very good; that's very interesting. Thank you.

We'll continue with Susan Prentice, who is here on behalf of the Child Care Coalition of Manitoba. Welcome, Susan.

[Dr. Susan Prentice, Member, Steering Committee, Child Care Coalition of Manitoba]

Thank you. Good morning.

I'm wearing three hats as I speak to you today. I'm the mother of two children, ages eight and ten; I'm a sociologist at the University of Manitoba who works on child care policy; and I'm active in the Child Care Coalition, an organization with a broad range of stakeholders.

I want to speak to the brief that you hopefully have already been able to read. I want to raise both a conceptual and a practical point that arises from our brief.

I'm only exaggerating slightly if I point out to you that we don't fund health care in Canada by giving all citizens their share of the health budget, that we don't fund roads and highways in our country by giving everyone a few kilometres' worth of asphalt, and we don't ensure firefighting and fire safety by giving everybody funds to buy their own water hose, but the current government has proposed that this would be a way to build a child care system--giving $100 to all parents of children under the age of six.

I'm actually quite enthusiastic about family allowances. I'm sorry they disappeared when they did, in the early nineties, and I'm glad to see a version of them back. But the program that has been proposed as a choice in child care allowance will not build a child care system for Canadians, notwithstanding the child care spaces initiative, which perhaps we'll speak to.

I want to tell you one of the practical problems that will flow from this conceptual approach. Two years ago Status of Women Canada women's program funded the Child Care Coalition in order to produce some economic and social impact studies. We looked at the effect of child care in Winnipeg.

Now, with another round of Status of Women Canada women's program funding, we're able to go to three new regions--the large agricultural region of Parkland, the northern town of Thompson, and the francophone village of St-Pierre-Jolys.

One of the things we've discovered is that in all three regions there are waiting lists. Parents report that they are trying to get into licensed child care programs, but the spaces are not available for them. This is quite similar to what we found earlier this year in Winnipeg, where the best indications seemed to be that there are more children on waiting lists to get into Winnipeg child care centres than there are spaces available.

These problems of spaces are systemic and they will only be solved by direct funding to programs. That's why the coalition has made the four recommendations before you.

The first is for secure multi-year funding to provinces and territories in order to enable them to spend directly on services; the second is the importance of a federal-provincial-territorial social policy framework; the third is the requirement that funds be spent directly on improving access to child care that is quality, developmental, and educational; and the fourth is to ensure full accountability in the spending of public funds.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Very good. Thank you very much.

We'll continue with Karen Ohlson, who is here from the Manitoba Child Care Association. Welcome, Karen.

[Karen Ohlson, President, Manitoba Child Care Association]

Good morning.

The Manitoba Child Care Association is a non-profit, entirely membership-funded organization incorporated in 1974. We have 3,800 members. We're the largest provincial child care organization in Canada and an affiliate member of the Canadian Child Care Federation.

In 2005, 70.8% of women aged 25 to 54 with children under six participated in Manitoba's workforce. Licensed early learning and child care services in all corners of Manitoba have very long waiting lists, as Susan has just illustrated, but Manitoba has the licensed space for only 15% of children. Parents on waiting lists have chosen regulated child care. Most will never actually use their choice of service.

In 2002, the Government of Manitoba developed a five-year plan for child care designed to first increase the child care workforce and then to significantly expand the number of licensed spaces. Good progress has been made, using a combination of provincial and federal funds. That progress and any future development of licensed child care in Manitoba is now seriously compromised with the cancellation of the funding agreement on early learning and child care, and termination of federal funds in 2007.

To ensure that children and families are supported, to ensure that our citizens are healthy and have the right skills for their own benefit and the benefit of their employers, to ensure that our businesses are competitive, and to ensure that our nation has the infrastructure it requires for its citizens and businesses, the Manitoba Child Care Association makes the recommendations that follow for program spending in the upcoming budget.

The Government of Canada must work in partnership with the provinces and territories to create an overarching early learning and child care agreement for a national child care system, including equitable funding for aboriginal child care services.

By 2020, federal funding for early learning and child care services should reach 1% of GDP through scheduled increases and annual increments.

The child care space initiative must include real dollars to create real sustainable spaces that are regulated, inclusive, accessible, community-based, and not for profit.

Income support programs such as the universal child care benefit or a tax credit should not be confused with child care services, and the federal government should not consider any of them a substitute for the national early learning and child care system.

I have more. They're all in our brief.