Human Resources Committee on May 1st, 2007

[Monica Lysack]

Not one space has been created under that.

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

Well, they are still the new government. I guess maybe it takes a little bit of time to establish that.

One way in which the previous early learning and child care agreement was going to benefit Nova Scotia was that in Nova Scotia it was going to be used to provide better training for child care workers and also better wages. I had people suggest to me, “Look, we already have people working. Why would you want to just put money into the system and increase the wages?” But it's really unconscionable in this country that among the lowest-paid full-time workers are child care workers--and perhaps artists and other creative people as well.

Can you talk a little bit about how you think Bill C-303 might do something about training and wages for child care workers?

[Monica Lysack]

I'll start, and then Jody can jump in.

I think it's important to note that the new government was speaking to creating a number of spaces. But that doesn't recognize that the existing infrastructure is crumbling around us.

For example, the Alberta government made a new announcement this morning about child care. They're actually under capacity. It's not that they need new spaces, it's that the spaces they have can't even be put to use because they cannot support their child care workforce. Certainly the deputy minister from that province was very clear in meetings that investments had to be made in their workforce. That in fact is what they're doing with some of the money.

Maybe Jody could continue.

[Jody Dallaire]

In terms of the workforce, that's a reality not only in Nova Scotia but across all provinces. It's especially true in the province where I'm from, which is New Brunswick. We have some of the lowest training requirements in all of Canada because we have some of the lowest wages paid in all of Canada.

What the transfer of sustainable funds would mean for provinces where the workforce is underfunded, which is all of Canada, is that there would be some long-term planning. We could actually have benchmarks and timelines to improve the wages, to improve quality.

To return to the non-profit issue, in our province, 70% of our facilities are commercially run, but we have a dire need for rural child care in New Brunswick. All of our schools are empty. As we expand the system, we're looking in New Brunswick to expanding the non-profit sector.

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

Okay.

I want to thank you for that. As I have said many times, we have in Canada many champions of child care, you among them, who have been so disappointed by this government in the last year and a half. It's a shame that a program, after so many years of wandering in the wilderness....

We had an idea, we had a plan, we put money into it, and it's been taken away for the $100 a month that really does nothing to provide access. But I want to resist the urge to get political on that.

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Ruby Dhalla]

Thank you, Mr. Savage.

Up next, we have Madame Barbot.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for being with us today.

I note that most of the groups are in favour of developing child care. I notice in particular that you expect some sort of coordination on the part of the federal government.

Mr. Dinsdale, you say that this poses certain problems for Amerindians. I would like to know whether you think that such programs are necessary in your communities and, if so, how they might be implemented in the current context.

[Peter Dinsdale]

I don't think there's any question the services are needed. In the brief we provided to the committee, we talked about the need for an early learning child care system. We were involved in some of the previous consultations leading up to this, and I certainly think it needs to occur more consistently and more effectively across the country.

The issue with Bill C-303, the way it sits today, is that it might not be the instrument we need to get to the aboriginal community. The tariff issue, the lack of jurisdictional coordination issue, and some of the access issues, we believe, are going to prevent a significant number of aboriginal people from truly accessing the program as they should.

I've heard that there's one amendment coming up on the profit thing. Hopefully someone is taking this to heart and is willing to look at it, because it's unimaginable that in the creation of a national system of early learning and child care there isn't contemplation of the challenges faced by Canada's aboriginal community.

And it's not going to get done, in our assessment, by the bill as currently constituted.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

Do you think that some mechanisms or that some sort of organization might provide a bridge so that the bill could be reviewed in the light of your particular situation? So you would not be sidelined. Given the situation of children in your communities, such a program is all the more vital.

[Peter Dinsdale]

Absolutely. In terms of suggesting people or organizations that should be involved, this committee has the resources at its disposal to talk to some of the leading experts in the field. As humble as we are, we'd welcome the opportunity to talk about how we believe urban aboriginal communities could access it if the bill were tweaked. Any time you talk about tariffs, in terms of the spirit of the bill—and I imagine some poverty groups have said the same thing to you—it is a significant barrier, irrespective of what that benchmark is. I think it's something that needs to be looked at seriously.

The jurisdictional challenges on first nations needs to be addressed. It's not currently in the field. It's an incredible tension for health and every other field. In the development of the new national standards, it would be prudent to take the time to figure out how they're going to navigate those at the outset. There are people much more schooled and wiser than I who could advise on that, but I think that work needs to be done.

Finally, the issues around universality and accessibility are important issues of principle if this committee believes aboriginal children are at some sort of disadvantage in this country. In the creation of an early learning and child care system, which might help ameliorate those conditions, it would seem to make sense to include some concepts and how to ensure there's appropriate access, because equal access doesn't always mean equitable outcomes.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

You said that in the cities services should be provided to Amerindian children as a group, but where there are not enough of them could you envision these children receiving such care with other children?

[Peter Dinsdale]

In the design of these programs, there are always trade-offs in terms of access and accessibility. Even in the largest communities across Canada, there are significant aboriginal populations that would need day care spaces and facilities for 30 or so kids. It's a pretty small threshold that gets established in these programs. We're in 117 friendship centres in most communities with 500 aboriginal people or more, and in some of the smallest and largest communities in the country. There's no question there is a critical mass of people, in all of these communities, to access programs.

That being said, where it's prudent and makes sense, of course synergies and economies of scale need to be developed. But these kinds of trade-offs aren't even contemplated at this point, so it's difficult to have an esoteric conversation as to how we may in fact find a better delivery system when we are not even addressing the issue in the proposed bill.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Ruby Dhalla]

Thank you very much, Ms. Barbot.

Now we have Ms. Chow, for five minutes, please.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Perhaps I may ask a question to either Monica or Jody regarding the multilateral framework agreements that each province is supposed to report out in public as to what's happening in their funding. After receiving the funding, what have they done with the child care money? And that has been in place for quite a few years now. When was the last time you saw a reporting out to the public from any of the provinces? Some may have.... Do you have any of those details?

[Monica Lysack]

Yes. For the year 2004-05, which is the year that ended two years ago, there are still eight jurisdictions, including the federal government, that have not yet filed public reports. Until this week there were absolutely no jurisdictions that had filed for 2005-06, which is a year ago, and one has since been posted.

So it's clear that governments signed on to the multilateral framework agreement, committing to public reporting, and yet almost all of the jurisdictions are two years behind.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

And can the public do anything about that? They probably don't even know that they're supposed to report out and that their government has not said anything.

[Monica Lysack]

First of all, parents of young children are otherwise occupied with important things and don't spend a lot of time reading government reports. So when community members try to get this information for people like us who are concerned about this, there is nothing we can do. It's basically voluntary, so if the federal government continues to transfer funds despite the fact that no reporting has happened.... In fact, when we look at the expenditures in different provinces, even without official reports we know there's a great deal of public money that is going to one-off sorts of programs that are actually not getting any results.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Perhaps I may ask the question to Dr. Shanker. We know that a comprehensive flexible service that is child-centred, responsive to parents' needs, can come in different formats. It can be a family resource centre; it can be a toy library, child care, home care, after-school activities.

Is that the kind of flexibility you're looking for in a wrap-around service to children, so that they would be ready to learn by the age of five, for example? Today there is a Statistics Canada report that said children from poorer families are not as ready to learn as they enter into the school system, and one of the reasons is that they don't have as many opportunities to participate in group activities with their friends.

Is that an area you have focused on in the past?

[Stuart Shanker]

There are two aspects to your question, and the answer to the first is yes, absolutely, we love the kinds of wrap-around options that are available in a demonstration site like Toronto First Duty, particularly when, even in the case when parents are working and are dropping off their kids, programs are made available that suit the parents' times, where they too can have these experiences and pick up the kinds of skills we're talking about.

With regard to the second part of your question, we do study this very carefully, and we tried to explain this in the early years report that we published two weeks ago. We do see a gradient effect in our society, and by far the largest percentage of children with these problems are in the lowest socio-economic strata. Unfortunately, when we study this in terms of brain development we see significant lags. One of the most telling indicators we have is language development, and these children do lag significantly behind children from other sectors of society.

However, having said that, it is a problem that affects all sectors of society, and as I tried to point out before, the largest number of children, simply in terms of volume, come from the middle and upper classes. So it's not a problem that can be targeted, which is why we like Bill C-303. It is something that needs a universal approach.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

In terms of the economic impact of children not being ready to learn, I believe there are various studies by economists that range from investing $1 today and getting $2 in results back or $4, in a lot of disadvantaged communities. I've even seen $7 in the U.S. study. Is that around the range of impact, for $1 invested, that we would be able to get in economic productivity for the country, for example?

[Stuart Shanker]

It's an excellent question.

A conservative estimate now, developed recently by Jim Heckman at the University of Chicago, estimates $8 saved for every dollar expended.

I will tell you one very interesting thing that Fraser Mustard has just done some research on. In all the studies that have been done so far, no one has factored in long-term health costs or mental health costs. When we factor in childhood depression, adolescent depression, and adolescent health problems, we estimate that the true cost may be double Heckman's estimates. It may be as much as $16.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Ruby Dhalla]

That's all for your time.

We are going to go on to our Conservative members. We have Ms. Yelich and Mr. Chong splitting their time.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

We've all heard the testimony here today about the need for a national child care program, with the exception of that of Mr. Dinsdale, who had more of a nuanced argument. He argued that aboriginal Canadians have greater needs, and therefore a universal program that is providing equal access would not be the best design for aboriginal communities. And furthermore, as we all know, on-reserve child care is an intra vires federal responsibility.

I want to direct my questions to the other four groups appearing in front of us today. You've all argued for what some have termed a universal program. Others have called it a national program.

My first question is for the Rural Voices for Early Childhood Education and Care. You've argued that it's not socially responsible to leave it to the province or territory alone. So is it your view that a national child care program should include Canadians living in all 10 provinces? Or would it be acceptable to you to have the national--?

[Carol Gott]

Are you referring to Quebec?