Human Resources Committee on May 8th, 2007

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

How long would they be on a wait list?

[Lorna Reid]

They could be on a wait list for up to 18 months.

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

How many spaces are available right now?

[Lorna Reid]

There are none available in terms of subsidy, but we have enough funding for 4,000 spaces out of the 22,000 licensed spaces.

I could give you an example of something that came to my attention in Brampton last week. I'm not sure whether it was in your constituency or not. We learned about an illegal program in a new section of Brampton where a woman was caring for 26 children in her basement and the basement of two other homes.

Of course the ministry found out and has closed it down. But I drove through the community: big new shiny houses, but no services anywhere, no buildings that could be used for child care, other than a new school. That new school already had portables. So there is no place, unless there were funding to build an addition to the school, to provide that child care.

As you know, Brampton is one of the fastest-growing cities in Canada. But it's not just Brampton. There are huge sections of Peel where these subdivisions are going up with no infrastructure around early learning and child care services, anything for parents and their families.

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

The struggle I'm faced with every Friday when I meet my constituents in my office, and otherwise when I see them at a variety of events in the riding, is that they want to ensure that their children do have access to quality care, that it is affordable at the same time, and that their children are going to be cared for while they've made the choice to work. One of their frustrations is that there aren't any spaces available.

How much would you estimate that a particular space costs to enrol a child for child care?

[Lorna Reid]

It depends on the age of the child. We usually average it out at about $8,000 a year as the cost. If it's an infant, it could be more than $10,000; if the child is school-age, much less than that.

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

So the $1,200 being given really wouldn't allow coverage for the $8,000 it would cost for a space.

[Lorna Reid]

No. We worked it out. It would provide maybe just over $4 a day, and the cost of care for an infant could be close to $60 a day, and for a school-ager at the lower end probably $18 a day.

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

I think they're just getting $60 a month.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Dhalla and Ms. Reid.

We're going to now move to our next member, Mr. Lessard, from the Bloc. You have five minutes, sir.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I also want to thank our guests for their presentations this morning, which were very enlightening and constructive. You have provided the necessary clarification not about the weaknesses, but about the adjustments that must be made to the bill. I think this bill is strong because it dares propose something progressive.

I will address my first comments to Ms. Pitre-Robin, from the Association québécoise des centres de la petite enfance. We have had an opportunity to hear from people who were highly critical of the Quebec system of early childhood development centres. They were often encouraged by our friends opposite, which is very worrisome. You raised something very important. The centres were set up following incredible efforts made to by women's groups, by the families as such, and by the Quebec government, despite the opposition, often on the part of the Canadian government.

You raised the issue of funding. We know that the Quebec government set up these centres in 1977. Every year, Quebec families face a federal shortfall of about $240 million. If they were paying themselves, they would receive income tax refunds. So the Canadian government is saving money that is not injected into the Quebec economy. That clearly shows that it is a societal choice, a policy choice.

You mentioned that these measures had considerably reduced poverty among women who are single parents, etc. That is very consistent with what we have seen, for example, for a similar network over the past 10 years in Ireland. In the past 10 years, the poverty rate for families in Ireland has gone from 15% to 6.8%. That is huge, whereas in Canada the rate has stagnated at 16%.

I would like you to go back to the principle of universality. People are very reluctant about that due to the economics of it. My party and I have always claimed that it was not an expenditure, but an investment in our children. I would like to hear you elaborate on the principle of universality.

[Claudette Pitre-Robin]

Thank you for your question.

I would like to start by clarifying that in Quebec, spaces cost $7 for all families, but that they are free for 20.5 hours per week for families receiving income security. Moreover, if they have a certificate from a health care professional, care may be provided full-time, if it is possible to prove that being in child care full-time is good for the children. Considerable steps are taken so that the most underprivileged children can have access to educational services. It is important for them, so that they are better prepared to start school, and consequently, to continue down their life path.

Often, criticism revolves around equity. People ask why they pay $7 when some people have very high incomes. I attempted to explain it quickly. On the one hand, children must have access to educational services. We know that it is of the utmost importance for them to be successful in school and for them to develop fully. The calculations in the examples that I provided earlier covered higher-income families. The example is contained in the document that I did not have translated, but I do have copies that I will leave on the table before leaving. Families in higher brackets—in other words, families earning $93,000 and more and that represent 20% of the population of Quebec—pay, through their income tax, $9.60 more per day. So they are paying $16.60, whereas income taxes for families with the lowest incomes—those earning less than $24,000 per year, in other words 20% of families—pay an additional contribution of $0.30. That makes their total $7.30. It is a universal measure everyone has access to by paying $7.00 on daily basis. Generally speaking, the tax system establishes the contribution of households with higher incomes. The system is based on a universal vision where everyone contributes to supporting the education of young children. It is very important.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lessard.

We are now going to move to Ms. Chow for five minutes.

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

On the Code Blue campaign, perhaps you could describe the kind of support this bill has had in the past activities of your organization and what kind of depth of support you have received across the country.

[Morna Ballantyne]

As I said, our campaign is made up of a number of individuals who have signed on to the campaign demands. One of the demands of the campaign from the outset has been federal legislation that addresses early learning and child care. We have 100,000 individuals who have signed on to those demands from across the country. We also have a number of organizations; we estimate that about three million individuals are represented through those organizations.

Code Blue has done some polling on the subject, and there is absolutely no question that there is very strong widespread support from individuals of all income levels and of both genders, both in the paid workforce and outside the paid workforce, who actually support putting in place a system of early learning and child care.

The other thing to note is that when that system was put in place in Quebec, it is widely known that it was the most popular thing a government has ever done. It's what people want government to do: to intervene in a way that individuals can't. You can have as much money individually, but that doesn't create access to spaces. That doesn't create spaces. It doesn't create a system, and that's what Canadians want. Certainly that is our understanding, and that comes from polling, which is a little bit more scientific, but it also comes from the numerous letters.

I was copied in at least 250 or 260 letters to each of you supporting this legislation. I'm not sure how that compares. When you study a bill, I don't know if you hear from that many Canadians who are actually paying attention to what Parliament is doing. I think there is widespread support.

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

Politicians are always very interested in polling. Do you have more information about that?

I think her ears perked up.

You can perhaps submit it later on.

[Morna Ballantyne]

Information on the polling we did is actually available on our website in both French and English, but we could also give copies to the clerk for distribution. We can do that very quickly, because you are moving forward in your meetings. We can do that right away.

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

Thank you.

Here's another question, probably for Ms. Friendly. I see the chart that was handed out today that talks about “federal transfers designated by early learning and child care”. It breaks down the total by province by fiscal year, so you folks must be tracking how the provinces are using or not using the funding. Perhaps one of you can expand on that.

[Martha Friendly]

Since you submitted the chart, perhaps you'd like to respond.

[Sue Colley]

Yes. We are trying to track the amount of money.

What this table shows is first, on the first page there, a list of allocations from the federal government that were explicitly dedicated to early learning and child care funding from 2003-04 on. That doesn't include moneys that were in the CST, which already existed as a cost-shared portion of the federal funding.

You'll see that the total is extensive: $2.65 billion, which is why we are really supporting this bill for more accountability on the part of provinces and territories, the recipients of that funding.

If you look, you'll see that what's happening, of course, is that because of the reduction in the 2007-08 fiscal year as a result of the cancellation of the agreements, the amount of money has been reduced in every single province across the country.

Our next task, Ms. Chow, is to track what impact that's had on actual provincial spending, because in fact the lack of any accountability means that right now we actually don't know what impact it's had on each individual province's budget.

[Martha Friendly]

Could I just follow up on that, Olivia?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Do so very quickly, because we're almost out of time.

[Martha Friendly]

This is quite true. The information about how much money is allocated by province is available on the Internet. I want to add that I'm very concerned about the absence of reporting that seems to be happening. Beginning with the multilateral framework agreement in 2003, there was a requirement for public reporting from the provinces of how the money was spent, whether to Canadians or to Albertans—or whatever the province is. That seems to be disappearing.

In addition to that, I'm particularly concerned that the money for research and for monitoring and tracking is gone, and so it's going to become increasingly difficult for people like me—researchers—and for anybody else to be able to track any of these kinds of things. I think this is an enormous concern, from a public accountability perspective.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Friendly.

We're now going to move to the Conservatives for the last question of this round. Mr. Brown, you have five minutes, sir.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I've got a few questions for the witnesses today on the issues of limiting choice, withholding payment, and universality. I'm still waiting for someone to make a case for this bill. We haven't seen that yet, and I'm going to try to get you to analyze these three areas of concern.

In terms of limiting choice, clause 3 states that the purpose of this act is to establish criteria and conditions that must be met before a child care transfer payment may be made. Ms. Dallaire from the CCAAC stated last Tuesday that her organization's position is that we need a range of programs. We need income supports for families, and we also need a range of quality child care programs.

My concern is that this bill could potentially take away from that. We've already heard that Mr. Dion would take away the $2.4 billion provided directly to parents under the universal child care benefit; that's disconcerting, because there are obviously people who aren't in that cookie cutter formula of day care that this would take away. It would limit choice for parents.

We'd be saying to parents that if a father or mother wanted to stay at home to provide their child care services, they don't qualify. It would limit the ability of parents to pick the child care service that they deem is most important to their children.

My larger concern with this bill is the withholding of funds for child care. We've already seen that happen provincially in the Province of Ontario; Dalton McGuinty, the Liberal Premier of Ontario, was given $97.5 million for child care, and in this year's budget the only need he said he saw was $25 million. He took $72.5 million from child care.

Now we see one government doing it. I don't want to give the tools to another government to withhold funds for child care. I struggle to see how a bill about child care.... The only thing it does is provide means to take away child care funding. It gives governments a knife to cut funding, and we saw this happen in the early 1990s when the then Liberal government cut $25 billion from social services.

We realize, obviously, that Pierre Trudeau left the country a debt of $38 billion in 1984, so they had to make cuts, but I don't want to give governments the ability to cut child care. If they're going to make cuts in the way the Liberals did, why are we going to allow them to do it in areas of social services?

What this bill says is that child care is a free target for governments. It says that if they want to pick any excuse to cut child care, they can. I don't want to see governments cutting child care. I am very proud that this government tripled the funding for child care. That's something we can be proud of, supporting child care, but we have a bill now that allows us to cut the heart out of child care if a government decides to. If the Liberals were returned and decided to make their target area child care, this bill allows it. Any government could. When am I going to hear a case, an argument, of how this is going to enhance child care, how it's going to enhance choice, how it's going to add funding?

We've already heard from Ms. Savoie, the person who put this bill forward, that there's no new funding involved in this bill--no new funding. I've heard from witnesses who seemed to be anticipating that this would mean more funding for child care. Let's be very clear--there is not a cent, and that's from the person who put this bill forward.

I'll give you one example of how a government down the road could have the means to cut child care. Ms. Savoie said it would be conditional on universality. Subclause 5(4) states the criterion of universality must be met in order for a province to receive funding. Well, in Quebec right now, which is exempt, that's 54%. About 50% in Quebec have child care services, so we have a concern now that there are going to be different interpretations of universality, and a future government could use that tool, as Paul Martin did between 1993 and 1997, to cut child care.

I found the comments by Ms. Friendly interesting. Are you concerned that this bill provides no new funding, and are you concerned that this bill provides governments with an ability to block and freeze child care funding?