Evidence of meeting #49 for Finance in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was companies.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Thank you.
I didn't quite catch what you said at the beginning. Did you say “Pacific Gateway Hotel”?
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Okay.
We will go to questions, and I'll give you the lineup. We will begin with Mrs. Jansen, and then we will have Mr. Fragiskatos, Mr. Ste-Marie and Mr. Julian.
Mrs. Jansen, the floor is yours for six minutes.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Thank you very much.
I should put my timer on, but that's all right. Just warn me.
Ms. Pihlak, you might not know it, but many years ago when I was a young teenager, I used to work in a day care. I enjoyed it very much, but it broke my heart to see how hard it was on the kids when their moms and dads came and went. My sister also worked there. Of course, I was a young teenager, so I only worked after school and I in the summer. My sister worked there. She had papers. She worked until she got married and had a family of her own.
I'm just wondering how many.... You were mentioning that there's a high turnover. I know in my lived experience that much of the turnover was due to the women getting married and having children of their own. I wonder if you could speak about whether you've looked at that part of it.
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Licensed Child Care Network
Yes, the statistic is that it's around three to five years that people stay in the field, and then they leave. At the beginning of your career, in your early 20s, you have a lot of energy. You may still live at home. You may not have the fiscal responsibility of paying rent and buying your own groceries, so it's a great career for someone in their early 20s. However, if I can speak about my personal experience on the floor, I wasn't able to afford my own apartment working as an ECE, so that's why I moved up the field so quickly.
It's really not a living wage, so I think that is why so many women decide to leave. They have a family or get married or simply have to move on, as discussed in our paper, because it's just not enough wages.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Yesterday we had someone who did a report on it called “Look Before You Leap: The Real Costs and Complexities of National Daycare”. They did a study, and they basically were saying that a low estimate of the cost would be about $17 billion annually and that the most reasonable estimate would be at $36.3 billion, based on the many differences there are between square footage, the number of kids per teacher and all of that kind of stuff.
What she was saying is that it will be basically not possible to deliver on this promise because of all those things. Have you looked at the numbers closely to see whether it looks like it makes any sense?
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Licensed Child Care Network
I'm going to pass that one to my colleague Céline.
12:55 p.m.
Céline Bourbonnais-MacDonald
I have. I think it's based on, obviously, different perspectives and whether we do it gradually. I was involved with the implementation of full-day kindergarten in our southwestern Ontario region. Again, I believe that the current proposal over a certain number of years is perhaps a more prudent approach than going full peed ahead.
The data that I am familiar with is comparing the return on investment with regard to what the Province of Quebec did originally from the late 1990s and moving forward. When you bring more people to work, basically more taxes are being paid, and you end up.... I believe the program, as it stands currently, was breaking even. Now, with the pandemic, obviously, there are certain concerns in any jurisdiction with the cost.
1 p.m.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
I know she also mentioned a study by Baker, Gruber and Milligan, and she was saying that only one-third of children in Quebec are in the higher-quality CPE spots. How would we end up avoiding that problem, based on the numbers you're seeing?
1 p.m.
Céline Bourbonnais-MacDonald
I think one of the ways that we are looking at Quebec is not exactly that this is going to be our answer to all of our issues. We know there are going to be various levels of engagement from parents, because they do wish choice, so when we start to look at expanding a system, we need to consider various ways of delivery, depending on the various areas.
We know that across our country there are schools that have in-house child care. We have centres that are stand-alone. We have regulated and family-centred child care. Given all the various methods of delivery, we can really reduce the wait-list and the number of children waiting—
1 p.m.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
You mentioned choice, and I think that was the big message from yesterday. What Canadian parents are looking for is choice. It looks like this program doesn't actually give us that. She was suggesting, rather, that you would put that ability into the parents' hands rather than impose upon them a system like this.
1 p.m.
Céline Bourbonnais-MacDonald
I beg to differ, in the sense that right now, considering my own experience as a brand-new grandmother with a grandchild in B.C. and young nieces and nephews in the Ottawa and Montreal areas, we don't have choice currently—
1 p.m.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
In B.C., actually, because of the NDP program rollout, we just had 18 new facilities choose to shelve their plans to open because of the fact that this is being imposed on them, so choice is definitely going to be an issue, as well as capacity.
1 p.m.
Executive Director, Licensed Child Care Network
Can I interject quickly?
We speak about choice; however, there's currently not a choice. Even if a parent wanted their child to go to a child care centre, there are not enough ECEs and not enough spaces. Having a national plan will allow parents to choose to enrol their child in high-quality care. Right now, it's unlicensed, licensed, and home care. It's such an array of quality that a national program will allow for the safety and quality of education of children.
1 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Okay. We will have to move on to Mr. Fragiskatos for six minutes, followed by Mr. Ste-Marie.
1 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Professor Bourbonnais-MacDonald, it's great to see you again. Ms. Pihlak, it's great to see you.
Thank you for taking part. I want to begin with you. In fact, I'm going to hazard a guess that my entire six minutes will be spent questioning you both, not to take anything away from the other witnesses who have come before us today.
I would clarify something, and Mr. Chair, I put this to you as well. The idea that the federal government is trying to impose what's in the budget as a national early learning and child care program on Canadian families and the idea that—as we heard yesterday, very surprisingly, and I'm being polite—families would be coerced into taking part in the program are completely false ideas. Parents will, of course, retain choice. Canada is a democracy. I'm not sure where the sorts of questions that we just heard.... Again, we heard some of this yesterday, Mr. Chair. It's bizarre. I was going to say it borders on the bizarre; it's just bizarre. Let's clear that up. This is about making sure that of course parents have choice, but parents have options. It's very expensive.
That's my first question, in fact, to Kara or Céline. I'm not sure who wants to take it. Child care is very expensive throughout Canada. Can you expand and go into that for us?
1 p.m.
Céline Bourbonnais-MacDonald
Yes. We are one of the few countries within the G20 that... Basically, for parents, especially in some of our larger cities—Montreal, Vancouver, and Toronto, and London is moving up there—the cost per year of having one child in regulated child care, if not two, is even higher than tuition fees for post-secondary education.
If we're trying to balance having quality care at the same time as maximizing the pedagogy and the curriculum that come with care and learning, what is being proposed is basically giving children across the country an ability to move forward within the structured school system with a lot of potential. I mean potential not only from the point of view of academics, but also their personal well-being, their self-worth. There's ongoing research, and McMaster University is a key leader in that.
It's really important to consider what parents want. What they need first is obviously, as we discovered through the pandemic, accessible and dependable care so that they can continue to do their work, whether they're working from home or whether they're frontline workers. With that in mind, a system that can offer that, regardless of whether we're in crisis mode or not, is supporting families from that perspective.
Also, I want to reinforce what we were talking about earlier in our presentation, Kara and I. It's the concept that the infrastructure of the system—the building, whatever that looks like—is dependent on a very strong, qualified workforce to make sure that our children are in the right environment and that parents have choice within that system, which includes emergency care—
1 p.m.
Céline Bourbonnais-MacDonald
Thank you.
1:05 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
No, I didn't want to cut you off. I was just saying that I understand exactly what you're saying. We do, unfortunately, have limited time.
Kara, let me just put something else to you, and you can take it in any direction you wish. I certainly acknowledge the attraction and retention issues that you have pointed to. I think that is something that needs to be addressed by the federal government—with the provinces, of course, and the nuances matter here for sure. I don't want to take away from that.
There's another question that I wanted to put to both of you. I hear an argument from especially the Conservative side—and I think only the Conservative side, in fact—that a tax benefit would suffice, so let's go down that path. What do you make of this argument? The Conservatives worry that the state is expanding and that national programs of this type are not necessary. What do you think of that sort of argument?
1:05 p.m.
Executive Director, Licensed Child Care Network
Tax benefits are not child care.
You can think of it this way. I receive a tax benefit from the Conservative government and I go to sign up my child for care, but there's no care. At my personal centre, the wait-list is until September. At other centres, it's for years. There are simply not enough spaces for the children and the parents who need them.
Tax credits do not fix the system. We need a complete system overhaul whereby we invest directly in the infrastructure and directly in the educators, because there are simply not enough of them and there's not enough good high-quality care right now. It's not a personal responsibility anymore; it's the social right of the child and the family to have the care they need.
Céline, would you like to talk more about this?
1:05 p.m.
Céline Bourbonnais-MacDonald
No. That was well said.
1:05 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
It's very helpful to us, as I know from previous conversations on the importance of early childhood learning especially that both of you have put to me.
Chair, I turn it back to you. Thank you very much.