Human Resources Committee on May 8th, 2007

[Jonathan Thompson]

Yes.

One of the things that document also talks about, though, is that there is a multitude of things that probably need to be brought to support the family. That would be one, and that would definitely help. But when you look at the level of poverty across the first nation communities and the number of multiple problems that many families face, they would also need to be able to access other family support services to deal with drug and alcohol and substance abuse and that sort of thing, parenting.

But yes, absolutely.

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

And poverty, clean water. A third of the kids don't have clean water.

We have an amendment. The person who proposed the bill, Denise Savoie, was very clear right from the beginning that home child care really should be part of this bill--including aboriginals, spelling it out very clearly. So having this amendment, and this bill being one of the solutions--not the be-all or end-all--would you support those kinds of approaches?

[Jonathan Thompson]

Oh, I'd have to see the amendment first, but it sounds like you're on the right track, yes.

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

Thank you.

I have another question for whoever wants to pick it up.

It's quite expensive to have parents stay at home. The direct cost would be.... Right now, the rate of maternity and parental benefits is about 55% of the regular pay up to about $413 per week. That covers the first year of a child's life and it costs about $2.7 billion to Canadian workers and businesses. If you multiply that by six, it would come to about $16 billion per year, cover only about 60% of all parents with newborn babies. So if you want to cover all families, it would cost about $27 billion per year to Canadian taxpayers.

We also estimate that if all mothers with children under the age of six were to leave the labour force, the employment in Canada would shrink by 7.5%. In the long run, it would cost the Canadian economy upwards of $83 billion per year.

If you're looking at cost to the economy plus cost to taxpayers, it is substantial. I don't know whether anyone wants to respond to that.

[Kate Tennier]

You are so off the mark. Why are you against the $18,000 for this day care spot in Toronto going to that young single mom? That's what it's about. Why are you against equality?

Why would I want to go out of the labour force if somebody pays me? I wanted to work. I wanted to work for a certain number of years when my child was.... You are really insulting women. This is not what we're talking about. We are talking about equality for mothers and fathers for the 13, 14, and 15 different choices that are now working for parents. Why you can't honour that is what Canadians simply don't get.

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

Perhaps, Mr. Chair--

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Yves Lessard]

You have 30 seconds.

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

Yes.

I never supported the former Premier of Ontario, Mike Harris, forcing single mothers back to work. It's called workfare, and they have to be torn away. If we actually pick the universal child care benefit and put it into the child tax benefit, that single mother that we are talking about would get far more money, and it would not be taxable. That is something we hope the Conservative government will do.

[Kate Tennier]

You seem to be deciding--

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Yves Lessard]

Thank you, Ms. Chow and Ms. Tennier.

We will now go on to Mr. Brown and Mr. Lake.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We'll be splitting our time very briefly in the five minutes we have.

I have a question for Pastor Davis. What I liked in your comments was about the broad range of child care services that we need to have.

My concern with this bill is that it's an essentially mandated, cookie-cutter formula. I want to know, from the work you do, your church and the charitable community, do you get a sense that everyone you encounter works nine to five and they all require government day care? Do you ever run across people who work nights, who have shift work, or choose to be at home? In your experiences you mentioned low-income individuals you work with. Do you get a sense that there is a broad range of needs?

[Rev. Jay Davis]

Absolutely. That's where I guess I default again to saying we need to have a group of people who are looking out of the box. The people I'm in contact with on a regular basis are all over the map, from shift work to retail, with all kinds of challenges. It's so diverse. I guess that was my concern as I went through Bill C-303. The real roots may not even be economic at the foundational level. I mean, there needs to be funding, but the roots of the family needs, at least the ones I'm working with on a daily basis, are so diverse that it's too complicated to simply say “Here's this plan and here's this plan; make your life fit into it.” Ah, it's so challenging.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Thanks, Pastor.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I have a question for Ms. Matychuk. Could you give us a snapshot of the past five years of your family's taxable income?

[Nancy Matychuk]

It has probably hovered around $40,000, give or take.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Maybe you can tell us a bit about the sacrifices your family has had to make to ensure that you could make the choice to have a parent stay home.

[Nancy Matychuk]

I guess we live differently from a lot of people. We don't have a lot of luxuries in our life, but I have to say we don't really consider them sacrifices. We really enjoy having our children with us, so they don't feel like sacrifices, but we certainly live quite a bit differently from a lot of people in our community.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

We heard Mr. Lessard earlier today using the phrase “if you don't want to use it, you don't have to” in regard to child care. A lot of people say that about the Liberal plan, but what they don't say is that you do have to pay for it. To illustrate, if we wanted to save time and cut out the middleman, you could simply go down to the day care where your neighbours take their kids and you and your husband could write a cheque to cover part of the costs of their day care. How does that make you feel?

[Nancy Matychuk]

That's very frustrating. If my husband and I are taxed at a greater rate, and I believe that a program like this would put a greater tax burden on everybody in the country, then my choice is removed. I'm forced into the workforce even when I don't believe that's the best thing for our family.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

In the earlier session today we heard that many of the witnesses spoke in favour of the bill and almost all of them suggested that this is just a start and basically the funding must follow. One of the witnesses suggested that this funding might be in the neighbourhood of $20 million, which is consistent with Olivia Chow's numbers, if you calculate them out.

I did want to comment on one more thing. With the UCCB--I calculated it out at one point--your family, over the years, had they received this benefit over the course of the time that your kids went through that zero-to-six age range, would have received a total of $36,000 had this program been in place since your first was born.

There's been a suggestion made by several people on the other side that it's “nothing”. How would $36,000 over the years have helped your family? Do you think it's “nothing”?

[Nancy Matychuk]

It would have been enormously helpful to us. It would have probably enabled us to do some more fun things in our lives with our kids. We do a lot of fun things, but we would have been able to maybe take a vacation. We would have been able to maybe put our children in some more programs in the community. It would have helped us a lot.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Yves Lessard]

Thank you, Mr. Lake.

The time has come to thank the people who have appeared via video conferencing and the people who have been with us since 9 o'clock this morning. Your contributions have been very enriching for committee members, and we thank you for that.

I would also like to thank the House of Commons staff members for their good guidance.

The meeting is adjourned.