Thank you very much.
I'm Adrienne Montani with First Call: B.C. Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition. With me is Julie Norton, our chairperson.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. I'll explain our name first. First Call means that we think children and youth should have first call on society's resources. It's very simple, because they have the right to it and because they're our future, of course.
In our brief that we submitted earlier, we said that children are the best investment for a sustainable future. It's not just a nice slogan, but actually very true and is backed up by stacks of research. We have made commitments to children that we're not honouring. I refer here to the all-party pledge in 1989 to end child poverty in this country by the year 2000. We obviously missed that deadline. We also signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child shortly thereafter, but there are lots of children's rights we have not upheld.
Based on these commitments we've made and have not completely fulfilled, and on the research that we stand upon on the issues of child development and the harm that poverty does to children, we have an over-arching message to you that children are our most sustainable resource and that we should be investing in them in this next budget—and certainly in a recessionary time.
In our written submission you'll see two major recommendations. We've tried to lump them together. The best thing this budget could do would be to make a strong investment in early childhood development. That would be the first thing. Our second recommendation would be to reverse the growing trend in income inequality in this country. Both would accomplish something in improving children's health and well-being. They are social determinants of health that we need to pay attention to if we want to improve outcomes for children in this country.
Canada's current claims of investing heavily in early childhood development are challenged by the actual data and the results we are achieving. We are regularly lambasted in the international research by the OECD, UNICEF, and Save the Children. In repeated international comparative rankings with other developed countries, we rank at the bottom in our investment in early childhood development and our support for young children and families.
Here in B.C. we have research that shows that about one-third of the children arriving at kindergarten are vulnerable in terms of one or more developmental indexes, meaning they're vulnerable to poor outcomes as they grow up.
Meanwhile, the research evidence is extremely strong—and some of it was cited earlier—on the importance of early brain development and the extremely high economic and social return on investment in early childhood development.
The largest chunk of funds the current government puts toward early childhood development is for the universal child care benefit, which we would argue is a fine income transfer for low-income families. It's fine to give low-income families money, but this benefit does absolutely nothing to increase the number of child care spaces in this country or to increase their quality or accessibility. So we think this needs to be re-examined. Call it an income transfer, but don't call it a child care benefit, because that's not the way it works.
So based on this information, and in line with some of the previous speakers, we are suggesting that we make a substantial and significant investment in increased transfer payments to provinces and territories to create a system of child care that actually increases spaces and the accessibility and affordability of child care, very much like the Quebec system. We need federal transfers to do that. This is important not only for children's development, but also for women's equality and women's attachment to the workforce—and even their ability to go back to school so they can become more employable. In this country, only about 17% of children under 12 have access to child care space. So it's impeding our economy in that way.
The budget should also enhance the current federal investments in programs with good track records, such as CAPC, the community action program for children; the Canada prenatal nutrition program; and aboriginal head start. If you remember Kellie Leitch's report, she recommended that 25% of aboriginal children be given access within five years. We think that's an abysmally low target; it should be 100% of aboriginal children who have access to that.
Our second overarching recommendation is to look at the growth of income inequality in this country. The recent Conference Board of Canada report card says that poverty is the chief challenge facing this country. We have an abysmally high poverty rate, and it has not gone down very much since 1989.
In our brief last year we called for a comprehensive legislated commitment, with timelines and targets, for a poverty reduction plan in this country. We call for it again this year.
But this year we particularly want to draw your attention to income inequality and how it needs to change. Families are working as hard as they can. They are working extra hours to make up the difference in their stagnating wages. Most of the tax cuts made and those kinds of changes have benefited those who already have the most and are doing very well. Those in the middle class and the lower income bracket are working harder. So you have women working two jobs, single parents working two jobs, having no time for their children, just to keep up.
The policy levers that we'd ask you to look at or recommend to government are to increase the child tax benefit; increase eligibility for EI benefits, especially for women, because they're way underrepresented, so increase access to EI and the level of benefits; look at youth-at-risk employment programs and continue to invest in those; increase social housing investments to restore some of that federal funding; make post-secondary education accessible in this country to those with financial barriers; and again, invest heavily in early childhood development.
I want to sum up by saying tax cuts don't help low-income families very much, because that shrinks our government capacity to care for each other. That's really important, and we've lost that capacity.