My name is Jody Dallaire. I am the chairperson of the national organization called the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada.
With me today is Monica Lysack, our executive director.
I'm going to be giving my remarks partly in French and partly in English, and I'm going to start in French.
This year, the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada celebrates 25 years of advocacy for quality child care. Our membership reaches more than four million Canadians from across the country, including parents, educators, researchers and students, as well as various organizations at the provincial, territorial, regional and national levels.
I am here today to express our support for C-303. When passed, this bill will ensure accountability for funds that are directed towards building a learning and child care system. All federal parties agree that we want the best possible experiences and outcomes for our children.
Child care supports healthy child development, reduces child poverty, promotes women’s equality, deepens social inclusion and advances a knowledge-based economy and therefore ongoing economic prosperity. Moreover, improving child care services will help Canada meet its commitment to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which names child care services as one of the fundamental rights all children should enjoy.
Quality child care is a public good, and should be treated as such in terms of public policy, public investment and public accountability. Bill C-303 represents a significant step forward for child care services in Canada. This legislation lays the foundation for us to move from the current patchwork of expensive services of varying quality, funded primarily by user fees, to a framework that provides families with a choice of affordable, high-quality, community-based services, in licensed homes and centres, with both part-time and full-time programs.
The members and partners of our association envision a Canada where all children are supported by publicly funded, quality child care services. Like libraries and schools, child care programs should be a natural and expected part of our neighbourhoods. They should be available, accessible and affordable for all families that choose to use them.
Bill C-303 supports the community's vision for child care in Canada. In 2004, following a year of consultations, our vision was to translate it into a set of policy recommendations, which were put into a document called “From Patchwork to Framework: A Child Care Strategy for Canada”.
The first recommendation calls for legislation that defines and frames the implementation of child care in Canada. Our organization believes that when substantial public funding is available to build a system, as outlined in Bill C-303, new growth and expansion should be in the public and not-for-profit sector.
We advocate for the grandfathering of existing commercial facilities, as outlined in Bill C-303. This recommendation is based on the lessons learned about market failure and the current user fee subsidy approach and on extensive research about how public, community-owned and -operated child care promotes quality and accountability for public funds.
Bill C-303 acknowledges that child care falls within provincial-territorial jurisdiction and supports the communities to develop their own priorities. Having said this, we support the clause recognizing that Quebec has expanded its early learning and child care programs to ensure better accessibility than other provinces and territories.
Nevertheless, recognizing the diversity of Canadian communities does not mean accepting the existing disparity in services. All children and families, including those with disabilities, those from rural, remote, and northern communities, aboriginal families, and families from various backgrounds, should be entitled to quality and affordable child care services.
With child care legislation in place, communities and governments at all levels can work together to plan and implement a pan-Canadian child care system. We can build a system based on the existing government commitments to improve access to quality, affordable, and inclusive child care services, as outlined in the multilateral framework agreements in 2003, and we can begin to actually achieve these goals. The CCAAC has developed tools, such as a child care system implementation model, that support communities and governments in their joint efforts to advance a universal system.
Finally, legislation such as Bill C-303 is essential to accountability. Our experience in Canada over the last thirty years clearly demonstrates that we cannot leave the development of quality and affordable child care services to chance, nor can we rely solely on the minimal accountability provisions of existing intergovernmental agreements, such as those found in the multilateral framework.
Recent federal transfers have only required governments to report to the public, not to their legislatures. We note that most provinces and territories have not reported on how the federal transfers have been spent since 2004-05.
Since the only real accountability mechanism for analyzing and commenting on new investments is through public monitoring and pressure, this accountability mechanism places a lot of responsibility on communities. While community capacity-building, such as that provided by the CCAAC, can support citizens in this important work, our preliminary observations raise questions about the heavy reliance on this approach as the primary accountability mechanism when parents and community groups are already strapped for time and over-burdened.
In addition to reporting to the public, governments need to report to their legislatures. Public reporting should be complemented with legislated standards, such as those outlined in Bill C-303. Accountability for public funds requires no less.
It's easy for us to say that supporting children and families is important, but we call on our elected representatives to make these words real by passing Bill C-303.
Thank you.