Human Resources Committee on March 21st, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), our study on employability in Canada will commence.

I would like to take time to thank all our witnesses for being here today as we get back to trying to finish off our employability study. We had some legislation that took a little precedence. You may have heard of Bill C-257. That took some time out of our schedule, so we're back at trying to work at finishing off the employability study. I want to thank you for all being very flexible with your schedules and being able to reschedule and come back to see us here in March.

Each group will get seven minutes for their opening comments. We'll start with one round of seven minutes each, and then we'll have a second round of five minutes, and hopefully if we have time, a third round of five minutes as well.

Why don't we just get started? We'll start with Mr. Badger and Mr. Laws from the Canadian Meat Council.

Welcome, gentlemen. You have seven minutes.

[James Laws, Executive Director, Canadian Meat Council]

Thank you very much. I'll start off for the two of us.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you very much for allowing us to speak to you this afternoon.

As was mentioned, the presentation you have in front of you we prepared and submitted back in September. There are a few changes, but we'll highlight those for you.

My name is Jim Laws. I'm the executive director of the Canadian Meat Council here in Ottawa. We are Canada's national trade association of federally inspected meat packers and processors of beef, pork, poultry, veal, and lamb.

The meat processing, packaging, and rendering industry is the largest food processing industry in Canada and the 11th largest manufacturing industry in the country. The industry has annual sales estimated at over $19.5 billion, and it employs over 67,000 Canadians.

Our members include companies such as Excel Fresh Meats, Cargill Foods, Lakeside Packers, Tyson Foods, Maple Leaf Foods Inc., Olymel, Piller's Sausages and Delicatessens, Quality Meat Packers, and Rancher's Beef.

Working in a meat processing plant is tough work. It's cold. The work is physically demanding, with many tasks accomplished in the standing position. It can be repetitive in nature. Although a lot of technology has changed the processes over the years, there is still a lot of manual labour in the processing of meat. Several of our meat slaughter and processing facilities are in trouble, especially in Alberta. They simply cannot find enough labour to keep the plants running.

Alberta Agriculture recently estimated the current economic loss within the meat industry alone in Alberta to be $500 million annually. The current shortage of semi-skilled meat-cutting labour in Canada is causing Canadian meat factories to sell their current production in lower form, such as bone-in or untrimmed, than they would if they had more labour.

The labour shortage also causes Canadian meat processing companies to import, for example, partially processed, high-value pork supplies from the United States, much of which originated in Canada, because the Canadian pork factories do not have enough labour to further process the pork to sell to their Canadian customers' high-value specifications.

The other factor is the huge economic potential of added value from processing live animals that are sent to the United States. Approximately eight million pigs and one million cattle are exported annually from Canada to the United States. We estimate the economic loss to Canada for the meat industry to be over $3 billion annually.

Canadian agriculture was built on immigration. Many of Canada's current producers, in fact, were not born in Canada but have built successful and prosperous farm businesses here in Canada. The same holds true of Canada's food processing sector. Canada's foreign worker program provides that opportunity for our industry to grow.

Thank you very much.

I'll now pass it on to Mr. Badger.

[Gregg Badger, Vice-President, Placement Services, Canadian Meat Council]

Thank you, Jim.

My name is Gregg Badger. I'm the chief operating officer and the placement services partner of Ronald A. Chisholm. Chisholm is an associate member of the Canadian Meat Council. Our company has been around since 1938, and we're one of the largest food traders in the country, trading some $700 million in meat and dairy products around the world.

We recognized some four years ago that our suppliers and customers, the meat processors, were suffering from a lack of labour. Labour turnover and labour shortage were limiting the value-added activity that is occurring in the meat sector. As Jim mentioned, probably some $3 billion of value-added is left on the table each year.

Thanks to the temporary low-skilled foreign worker program, this issue has started to be addressed. The industry has made a successful start in securing foreign labour, but there is a lot more labour to come and a lot more to be done to pick up the gap. For example, for a Maple Leaf Foods or an Olymel to start a second shift in Brandon and in Red Deer respectively, they have to hire hundreds of foreign workers, and other plants are in the same boat.

We were very pleased to hear recently from Minister Solberg and Minister Finley. They announced changes to the temporary program, most importantly moving the temporary period from a 12-month period to a 24-month period. This is a huge benefit to the packers and producers and is much appreciated. They've made some other improvements to the program to try to increase processing times by putting applications online, and so on. These will be helpful, but there is still more to be done.

As I say, the 24-month period is a big help; it allows the costs to be amortized over a longer period. But some of the biggest challenges now are in getting these workers into the country in an efficient manner. So in terms of our suggestions of other things we would like to see happen, the top of the list would be better coordination, which I know is being worked on, but there needs to be more coordination between Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Service Canada, and HRSDC to facilitate work permit applications and approvals, both in Canada and abroad.

Citizenship and Immigration needs to be more in tune with the process, more involved, not only in creating approvals but in assisting in the enforcement of the rules of the program set out by HRSDC. There have been improvements, but there can still be more consistency among Service Canada and HRSDC offices across the country in terms of the application of the rules of the program and especially in processing times.

In Alberta, for example, it takes upward of 12 weeks for an employer to get an approval, and it can often take longer. Then when employees apply overseas, they're looking at anywhere from six weeks to four months, depending on the embassy. So that means that an employer that makes a decision to hire is waiting anywhere from a minimum of three to six to nine months before workers hit their plant. That means lost productivity as that time goes on. So increased resources and increased coordination between HRSDC and Citizenship and Immigration are important.

Some other matters in our material are more administrative in nature. The other major issue employers would like to see is limiting HRSDC to the job description, working hours, and wages, leaving out matters such as airfare and some other requirements that are in the program that make it more of a burden on the employer than it needs to be. Employers have to spend a lot of time and resources to go abroad and hire workers; they don't think additional burdens are fair.

We see that $51 million is allocated in the budget, and we hope that gets allocated mostly to resources for better processing times.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Badger.

Now we're going to move to Mr. Prost.

Mr. Prost, for seven minutes, please, sir.

[Alar Prost, President, Innovera Integrated Solutions]

Thank you, and good afternoon.

My name is Alar Prost. I am the president of Innovera Integrated Solutions, which is a research and consulting firm that develops employment programs that target people with disabilities and aboriginal peoples. We also do a considerable amount of research on employment issues related to these two target groups.

I'm also representing the Canadian Abilities Foundation from Toronto, which is an organization that provides some services, primarily information services, to people with disabilities. For well over a decade now it has been publishing the Canadian Abilities magazine, a lifestyle magazine for people with disabilities.

The reason I'm here today is to speak about the situation that people with disabilities face in the employment field, and more specifically about a study we undertook a couple of years back in collaboration with the Canadian Abilities Foundation. The study was called Neglected or Hidden. We attempted to find the reason that people with disabilities and employers were not connecting.

I've been in this field for well over 20 years, and I have heard the story over and over again. The people with disabilities are saying employers are not interested in hiring them, and employers in turn are saying they can't find people with disabilities, even if they want to hire them.

About three or four years ago we launched a training program targeting people with disabilities that confirmed exactly this. We worked with employers to develop a training program that met their needs and launched a program in five centres across the country, with 50 positions available.

My exposure to the number of organizations that serve people with disabilities in Canada tells me there are at least 550 organizations out there. We expected to be inundated with applications, because the jobs were guaranteed for those trainees who successfully completed the training. Instead we had 89 applications for 50 positions. It was a frustrating situation for us. The jobs were waiting, and we couldn't find the people with disabilities, even when we knew where to look for them.

We set about to find out why employers are not able to find people with disabilities and why people with disabilities are not responding to employers' solicitations. The study involved 1,245 people with disabilities. They responded in telephone interviews or online or with mail-in responses to a very extensive questionnaire; it was 14 pages. It took anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half to complete over the phone. About 66% of the respondents to our study had some post-secondary education. We also spoke with, or met directly with, over 50 employment services providers that specifically target people with disabilities. That comes to roughly 10% of the service providers in Canada. Finally, we also interviewed well over 50 employers to get their perspectives on this issue.

Interestingly, in spite of the tens of millions of dollars that have been provided to employment services providers across the country over the last few decades--and we are talking tens of millions of dollars--it basically shows that the most effective approach for people with disabilities in terms of finding employment turns out to be friends and contacts in the industry. The last on the list, in terms of usefulness of services, is job fairs. I thought I would throw that in.

We have tonnes of statistics that came out of the study, as this package will attest, and I'd like to share some of the more interesting findings with you today.

In essence, 70% of the people with disabilities were telling us that employers are indeed reluctant to hire them. They feel that employers need to provide more flexible working conditions and certainly need to make workplace accommodation available to them.

Employers tended to agree in many respects that, yes, they know there are those employers out there who have a negative attitude toward people with disabilities, and who certainly leave the impression that employers are not particularly interested in hiring people with disabilities. But when we finished the study, we certainly came to the conclusion that while the interested employers are in a minority in Canada, there are certainly sufficient numbers of them that, given the right programs and the right services available to the stakeholders, we wouldn't have an unemployment problem for people with disabilities in Canada. There are certainly many employers who are ready, willing, and able to hire people with disabilities.

What employers did tell us—and this was also confirmed by service providers and people with disabilities—was that they really lack the recruiting and integration experience, and that they often believe that people with disabilities have very limited skills and abilities. This is a stereotypical issue, in that unless an employer is willing to take the plunge and hire people with disabilities, that attitude isn't going to necessarily change.

Employers certainly admitted to us that they do not know where to find qualified people with disabilities, and seldom do they even reach out to service providers in their community. There is certainly a need, then, to increase awareness of disability issues in the employer community, as well as to help employers to be more forthcoming and open with workplace accommodation.

In terms of people with disabilities or labour force participants with disabilities, it certainly became clear to us that there are many qualified people with disabilities, but they still need to improve their employment preparation, particularly in the soft skills area. When people with disabilities have been taking training, they have tended to take training that interests them rather than training that employers need and in the skill sets that employers need.

We interviewed people, for example, who had spent thousands of dollars—and this is personal money that's spent—taking training in aroma therapy. There aren't many positions available for aroma therapists in Canada, but there have to be over 40,000 positions for truck drivers. Not all people with disabilities can be truck drivers, but a good portion of them can, and there's a desperate shortage in that field in Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Excuse me, Mr. Prost, but we're going to have to move on. I gave you a little bit of extra time, but we'll have to try to cover that in some of the questions.

[Alar Prost]

That's fine. I'll try it in the next five minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Prost.

We're going to move to Mr. Halstrom and Mr. Fefergrad.

[Irwin Fefergrad, Registrar, Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario, Canadian Dental Association]

It's Mr. Fefergrad and Dr. Halstrom.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, gentlemen. You have seven minutes, please.

[Dr. Wayne Halstrom, President, Canadian Dental Association]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

Good afternoon. I'm Dr. Wayne Halstrom. I'm the president of the Canadian Dental Association, and I welcome the opportunity to speak to you today about employability and human resources in dentistry.

I am joined at the table, as you have heard, by Mr. Irwin Fefergrad, the registrar of the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario, who will share some of his thoughts on these issues following my remarks.

I would like to begin by addressing the issue of how foreign credentials are recognized in Canada. I imagine that for government there are two main pressure points. One is the apparent shortage of medical personnel in some fields, and the second is the population of foreign-trained professionals themselves.

On the first point, in dentistry we are fortunate that we are not currently experiencing major manpower shortages. Except in a few remote areas, most patients are able to readily see a dentist if they need to. Looking down the road a decade or two, we may have some challenges with the aging population of the profession, but fortunately we have enough lead time to deal with these concerns preventively.

On the second point, we recognize that it is important for foreign-trained professionals to have a good sense of the certification process before they decide to come to Canada. The Canadian Dental Association has made this information available through its website for several years, and we are happy to provide specific information to foreign-trained dentists who inquire.

In considering possible changes to the recognition of foreign credentials, one thing is paramount: we cannot compromise patient safety or Canadian standards of care. In fact, the concern is far more far-reaching than standards of care; it also includes appropriateness of care, which includes important cultural and language issues. This by no means suggests that we are unwilling to look for ways to make the process more understandable and smoother, and if appropriate, less time-consuming. However, this must be achieved in a way that maintains the appropriate care that our patients deserve and expect.

How do we know that practising professionals are meeting the high standard that Canadians expect? In dentistry, we have ensured this through a solid, four-part process of education, accreditation, certification, and licensure. This process ensures that licensed Canadian dentists have the training and skills that are needed to deliver safe and effective dental care. Education is delivered at 10 dental schools across Canada. The schools offer either DDS or DMD programs that are equivalent general practice degrees. Many also offer specialty programs in one or more of the nine recognized Canadian dental specialties. As well, a number of universities offer qualifying programs or degree completion programs. These programs were created specifically to meet the needs of the foreign-trained dentists in order to assist them in integrating into Canadian dentistry.

The limited available positions are allotted to candidates on a competition basis, drawing in large part on their scores on an eligibility exam. There is a similar procedure for Canadian students who complete dental aptitude tests as part of their admission requirements to dental schools. They must compete against other students for the finite seats in dentistry.

When we speak of accreditation in dentistry, we're talking about it at the institutional level, not at the level of individual dentists. The Commission on Dental Accreditation of Canada, or CDAC, is responsible for accrediting all dental and dental hygiene programs, as well as some of the dental assisting programs.

Accreditation is a lengthy, involved, and expensive process that requires regular site visits and considerable expense. CDAC has a reciprocal agreement with the American Dental Association. As a result, schools accredited by one are also recognized by the other. Graduation from an accredited program, be it a program leading to a DS or a DMD in Canada or the U.S., or one of the qualifying programs, is required prior to certification.

Certification of general dentists is done through the National Dental Examining Board of Canada, and as the name suggests, it's national in scope. The NDEB has undergone extensive changes in its processes over the last few years in order to achieve a system of examination that is fair and effective and that is recognized as one of the best worldwide. It is accepted as a basis for licensure by all provincial regulatory authorities for dentistry in Canada, which allows NDEB-certified dentists to apply for licensure in any province without having to undergo further testing of their qualifications.

Dental specialists, such as orthodontists or periodontists, are certified by the Royal College of Dentists of Canada. An NDEB certificate is required prior to certification as a specialist, which brings me to licensure.

As I mentioned, each province has a dental regulatory authority that licenses and regulates all general dentists and specialists in that province. In addition to licensure, these bodies are also responsible for the maintenance of quality assurance programs and for investigating complaints about dentists and taking appropriate action. Continuing education is an ongoing component of dental licensure, in order to keep dentists current as the profession develops.

This four-part system effectively ensures the ongoing monitoring of the way Canadian dentists practise, from their entry into the dental program all the way through to their retirement.

In terms of entry to the profession, I want to bring your attention to our concerns about the costs of dental education. Because of a number of factors, the tuition fees in dentistry are the highest of all professional programs in this country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

There is one minute left.

[Dr. Wayne Halstrom]

Primarily this is owing to institutional underfunding of dental programs, which necessitates high student fees. Dentistry is simply a very expensive program to operate. Our concern is ultimately the sticker shock of tuition fees that are in the neighbourhood of $32,000 a year. This could drive some qualified applicants away from choosing a career in dentistry.

For instance, the projected cost of a four-year degree in dentistry at the University of British Columbia is $171,000. Intuitively, we feel that this may be a particular barrier for some groups—for example, rural students—and may affect the long-term composition of the profession. Based on the fact that dental school clinics provide a much-needed community service with lower-cost treatment, there is a strong argument for increased funding to these schools. As it now stands, dental students are effectively subsidizing access to dental care.

Finally, the one remaining issue I wish to address with you has to do with team delivery of dental care. There are a variety of options as to how much direct access to varying levels of dental care is appropriate. I think there is a compelling argument to be made that dentistry has had it right for some time. With the introduction of dental hygienists and other allied dental personnel a few years ago, we were able to attach and achieve a high level of efficiency in dentistry. It ensures the highest standards of patient care and maximizes the impact of each provider as that care is delivered.

By having all of these services together under one roof, a patient is able to have preventive services, full diagnostic assessment, x-rays and testing as needed, and full treatment, without the need for travel or efficiencies or duplicate examinations and assessments. Historically this approach has also proven to be very safe.

In closing, I guess my take-home message is that we feel we have a lot to be proud of in dentistry.

I will now, for the next five minutes, turn the microphone over to Mr. Fefergrad, because I believe I've exhausted my seven minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You've done that and some of his as well.

Anyway, you only have seven minutes. We'll have to get to you maybe through some of the questions, Mr. Fefergrad. I apologize for that. We're going to move on, because we have a pretty tight schedule today.

Mr. Garcia-Orgales, please. Sir, you have seven minutes.

[Jorge Garcia-Orgales, Researcher, Canadian National Office, United Steelworkers]

I thank you for the opportunity to appear in this committee on this study.

I represent the steelworkers union. We have 280,000 members in Canada. These members work in a large variety of sectors of the economy including forestry, steel, mining, construction, trucking, post-secondary education, and a large number of service sectors.

The committee is interested in looking at employability issues, and I will be addressing those very shortly. But first I would like to give a bit of context on where we are coming from to address these issues.

First, employability has a bit of a “blame the victim” ring for us. When you talk about employability, you understand that something is missing in the person who is looking for a job to be able to get a good job. Something is missing individually--the person doesn't have the education that is needed, or something else has something to do with that. Perhaps the person was trained in another country and there isn't a good recognition process for them. In both cases, it sounds as if it's not the economic system we have, it's not the employer we have; it's the worker's individual situation. So employability sounds as if we are blaming them for that lack of something.

The other thing I want to talk about is the issue of opportunities. I again thank the committee for looking at the issue of employability. It's a good idea and the intentions are good, but I'm not sure you are addressing the real question. The real question is not necessarily lack of employability in the system; the real question is whether there are good jobs available. I want to give you some examples of this.

Unemployment in December in Canada was at 6.1%, and in the budget that was presented on Monday, Minister Flaherty said that unemployment in Canada was at its lowest level in the last 30 years. Are they good jobs? I want to say no. Most of the jobs created are in the service sector, and lots of them are part-time jobs.

Currently 13%, or close to 1.7 million workers, are working in temporary situations doing contract, seasonal, casual, or agency work. In 1989, one in ten new hires was a temporary worker. Right now the ratio is five to one in the number of workers who do not have full-time jobs. Two million Canadians work in poverty situations. They put in 40 hours a week but don't even reach the poverty line.

Of Canadians tax filers, 59% report incomes of less than $30,000. People who constitute the second-largest group of food bank users are employees. They are working but cannot provide food for their families. Undocumented workers are continuously growing, especially in the sectors of construction and caregiving. Temporary workers have all kinds of limitations when they come to Canada. We hear from our friends in the meat-packing system that they need workers, but they still bring them in on a temporary basis.

You can see from these few examples that there are jobs available in Canada, but they are not good, decent jobs with good pay and good working conditions. If you only address the issue of employability without attaching the need for a good national economic policy that guarantees good jobs, you are just subsidizing the employer and allowing the continuation of these low-pay, low-quality jobs in Canada.

Let's move quickly to the issue you are interested in of skills training. Employers are claiming that Canada is close to having a skills shortage crisis. Supposedly, skills shortage now ranks among the top five concerns of employers, and half of private sector managers are reporting occupational shortages or anticipating shortages within the next two years. We believe this is a typical cry from employers. They want more skilled workers, but they do not want to pay for them.

Canada slipped from 12th place in 2002 to 20th place in 2004 in terms of the priority employers place on training employees. Fewer than 30% of adult workers in Canada aged 25 to 64 participated in informal, job-related education and training in 2002, compared to 34% in the UK, 41% in Switzerland, 44% in United States, and so on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You have two minutes.

[Jorge Garcia-Orgales]

I have only two minutes? Oh, man!

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You have seven minutes in total.

[Jorge Garcia-Orgales]

The current government seems to agree with the idea that employers should do more on training.They say that in their budget.... I will be passing a submission to the committee later. The budget mentions that employers need to provide more training for their workers. We agree with the need for spending more money on training, and we have two suggestions, or ideas, on how to do this.

First is the idea of a training levy, like the one the Province of Quebec has, in which 1% has to be allocated for training, and if not, it goes to fund a system managed by employers and unions. A second model is matched funding. Any investment in training by the federal government or the province would have to be matched by the employer in some kind of formula to guarantee that employers pay for the training of their workers.

I want to quickly mention the issue of literacy and foundation skills. I don't need to mention to you all the numbers that say we need literacy training in this country or that literacy training is completely linked to productivity and the economic growth of the country.

I want to mention just three points that we want the committee to consider on literacy and foundation skills. First, funding has to be allocated, and it has to be allocated specifically for this reason, not just as part of a general training package. And those funds have to be directed to the public education system. English and French as a second language should be considered as an important part. We want a coordinated and integrated approach between the public school system, the employers, and the union to design and deliver these programs.

I see that you are wanting to cut me off, and I will have to come back later to some of the questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Garcia-Orgales. All I can assure you is that if it is tough for you for seven minutes, you can imagine how difficult it is for the politicians to stay to seven and five minutes. It is just as much fun.

[Jorge Garcia-Orgales]

Some people would say that we are also politicians.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

All right, we're going to move to our last presenter.

I want to welcome Ms. Lysack. You have seven minutes, please.

[Monica Lysack, Executive Director, Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada]

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I'm Monica Lysack. I'm the executive director of the Child Care Advocacy Association of the Canada. The CCAAC commends the committee for undertaking this study of critical employability issues.

I'm here today to discuss the links between employability and child care, and specifically how child care supports the employability of parents while at the same time helping provide children with the foundations for lifelong health, learning, and skill development.

This discussion is especially important today given the recent budget announcement that fails to move Canada closer to the universally accessible quality child care program that the CCAAC advocates. Though the budget was prefaced as a choice to support hard-working families, the lack of accountable funding for quality child care lets these families down and misses an opportunity to tackle employability issues. Accountable child care funding would have provided tremendous support to families by supporting parents, particularly women, to maintain and increase their labour force attachments.

I did some rough calculations this morning on the $250 million announced in the CST transfer in the budget, and I'd like you to know that we should have universal child care in about 107 years at this rate, with this government's policies. You can look forward to reading that upcoming publication.

Canada's productivity relies on working mothers with young children, who contribute $53 billion annually to Canada's GDP. That reliance is only increasing due to widely predicted shortages of skilled labour. Yet Canada has not built a network of income supports and public services, such as quality affordable child care, to broadly facilitate women's economic and social contribution. As a result, mothers are most likely to refuse work, promotions, or transfers because of family responsibilities.

When Canadian families do not have access to quality care, our labour force and our employability suffer. With women now the majority in virtually all university programs, decreased labour force attachment among mothers exacerbates skilled worker shortages. Not only must parents decrease their labour force attachment in the short term when there are no other viable child care options, but their future employability is also affected when they miss education, professional development, and advancement opportunities.

In addition to supporting the employability of their parents, child care provides children with the foundations for lifelong health, learning, and skill development, all related to their future employability. There's extensive, clear research showing that the early years, from birth to age six, set the foundation for school readiness, for literacy, lifelong learning, behaviour, and health. All children benefit from early learning and child care, not just targeted groups of children, and all parents can use information and support to help them raise healthy, well-adjusted, and resilient human beings.

What makes the case for universal, publicly supported, quality, accessible child care so compelling and so relevant to the issue of employability is that it meets the needs of children and parents. This explains why multiple studies show that the benefits of a universal child care system outweigh the costs by a factor of two to one, not including additional benefits for children at risk. So for every dollar invested, there's an economic return of at least $2.

Further, the committee has identified the mobility of the Canadian labour force as an important issue, and here again, child care has a role to play. Like schools and libraries, child care helps to build places in which citizens want to live and work. It helps provide a welcome to new residents from both outside and within the country and supports their participation in a new community. When child care is not adequately supported in all provinces and regions, families may be reluctant to make otherwise desirable moves or, alternatively, will seek transfers when it would otherwise have made sense to stay.

Finally, the committee has heard deputations about issues related to older workers. Sometimes grandparents provide child care for their families; however, as the Canadian population ages and workers stay in the labour force longer, there is likely to be even greater need for publicly funded, community-based child care.

It is extremely unfortunate, however, that just as the critical need for child care intensifies, public funding is disappearing. As discussed in the CCAAC's submission to the 2007 pre-budget consultation committee, the federal government has terminated bilateral agreements that committed $1.2 billion annually in dedicated funding to improve child care services. These agreements have been replaced with transfers to the provinces and territories of $250 million annually, with accountability yet to be discussed. This represents an annual funding cut for child care of $950 million, or 79%.

This committee and indeed all Canadians have reason for concern. In order to capture the numerous benefits of public child care investments, including the employability benefits described above, the federal government must make a more significant commitment. The CCAAC calls on the government to adopt the following focused investment strategy--two quick, easy things.

One, 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 commitments to advance quality, inclusion, and affordability.

The second thing is to enact federal child care legislation that recognizes the principles of a pan–Canadian child care system, makes the federal government accountable to Parliament with respect to child care funding and policy, and respects the right of Quebec and first nations to establish their own child care systems.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're going to get started with the opposition.

Ms. Dhalla, seven minutes, please.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Thank you very much to all of our presenters.

My question is actually for you, Ms. Lysack, on some of the points you raised.

We've done a lot of work on trying to ensure that parents have the opportunity to ensure that when they do decide to work, their children are going to be cared for. When we talk about employability, I think it's very important to mention and also discuss the employability of women across the country and mothers across the country. We know that their participation in the workforce is not at the rate and percentage it should be. Research around the world--you're probably going to agree with me on this--has connected the importance of investing in early learning and child care and also ensuring the success of not only the children but Canadian families.

We know that the Conservatives have put forward a $100 benefit that is taxable. Now that families are filling out their tax forms, they're realizing that they're going to have to give back to the government. So some families are ending up with some amounts as low as perhaps $50 to $60 a month.

Can you please tell us, since we are taking a look at the issue of employability, the impact that this $100 a month, which is taxable, is going to have on the employability of women entering the workforce, or wanting to enter the workforce?