Human Resources Committee on May 8th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Ms. Friendly, you don't have a whole lot of time, so we'll let you get in a quick response.

[Martha Friendly]

To answer your first question, you must know that a private member's bill may not be a money bill, so this is not a money bill. It's a private member's bill. That's number one.

Number two, we could have a talk about social policy. Federalism is not a perfect instrument. I believe there are many things that you're confused about from your remarks. No, I'm not concerned that it will serve to freeze or cut child care spending; I think the purpose of the bill is to shape the federal money that's now being spent.

Are those your two questions? The rest wasn't a question.

I don't believe that the bill has.... The bill is not about freezing policy, but about shaping it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we're going to have. We're over.

[Martha Friendly]

If you look at how to shape child care policy, part of it is to use the best practices in a bill, which is what this does.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Ms. Friendly, that's all the time we have. We're actually over time. We're going to have to maybe catch up in the next round as we move forward.

Mr. Savage, you have five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I've had have a habit of following Mr. Brown in questions. It's a treat. It's a little bit like following the elephants in the parade, but rather than stop and pick up all that stuff, let's just go around it and let's get serious about child care.

I want to give you a scenario that happened to me in the last election campaign. This is an issue that has galvanized child care workers and it's an issue that people feel very passionate about.

Conservative members don't like this bill. They didn't like the early learning and child care, and they feel passionately about it. I feel passionately that we should have some kind of framework for early learning and child care. I'd prefer that we actually had the money as well, that was allocated—it was certainly a good start—in the last Parliament.

The scenario I'm talking about was in the election campaign. Late in the campaign I had a call from a child care centre called The Growing Place in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. They called me up—and it was not political at all; I hadn't met the people who worked there. They asked me to come in.

They said they were very concerned about what was going to happen if the Conservative Party won the election. She said some of them had voted Conservative and some of them had voted Liberal and some of them had voted NDP, but that this issue was important to them because they felt so strongly.

Where I come from in Nova Scotia, I've talked before about the heroes of child care, such as Sue Wolstenholme, who I know some of you would know; and Pat Hogan, who won a national award and who operates a child care in a low-income area of Dartmouth. These folks have been waving the flag for a long time and saying we need to do something here. They were pretty excited about the early learning and child care, particularly the signing of the agreement in Nova Scotia that took place at the military family resource centre in May of 2005.

But it was the folks at The Growing Place who had a particular impact on me, because they'd never been involved, and they hadn't fought for this before; they had always run their own show. All of a sudden they had the sense that they were going to do something, first of all about wages, and something about the training of child care workers, and that there was going to be funding. Other people were excited that we were going to be able to provide minority language child care spaces in Nova Scotia as part of the agreement that was being arranged. Some special-needs parents were excited that for the first time they saw light at the end of the tunnel.

So my question is not so much on the money side. I want a sense, from some of you who have been in the child care field for a long time and have fought the battle, of how people are feeling, if that's a fair question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Ms. Rothman.

[Laurel Rothman]

Perhaps I could comment on how low-income mothers are feeling. We recently had a forum on living wages, a couple of weeks ago, pulling together people from a wide range of faith communities, of aboriginal communities, of low-income people. Lone mothers told us that when they cancelled the agreement, they knew they wouldn't even be able to wait for the year on the waiting list, or whatever.

Putting the pieces together of getting economic independence includes, first and foremost, some secure housing so that you have an address and a way to get going. Then it's child care, if you're going to start with either part-time employment, training, and/or post-secondary education. There's a whole range of things that follow after that, but if you don't have child care, you can't. If you're a parent of a young child—or a school-age child, but let's talk about young children—you're not going to get out that door. So we have lots of lone mothers saying, “Forget it; I don't have a chance, if there aren't going to be more child care services that I'm close to and that I can afford.”

[Martha Friendly]

Some of us have been working in this area since our children were little. Laurel and I were parents at the York University Cooperative Child Care Centre together, and some of us are now grandmothers—I'm not a grandmother yet, but I could be—but our children are unable to find child care. So we're now in a whole other generation.

You meet people such as the security guard in my University of Toronto building, a young Egyptian guy with two little kids whose wife really wants to work, partly so she can learn English, but also because they don't have enough money, and he's working two jobs. They're on the Toronto subsidy waiting list. He is very interested in politics and he said this was really something he could look forward to. I kept explaining that he wouldn't get child care right away, because it would take time to build the system. But it's people like that who will still be looking for child care down the road, as our children are, if something doesn't happen.

What hasn't happened in Canada is the first step; we haven't really taken the first step. I mean, we took the first step, and it was taken away. That's how we feel about it after all these years. These people who are our children, and their colleagues, aren't going to get child care either. That's how it feels.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Friendly, and thank you, Mr. Savage.

We're going to move to Mr. Lessard, for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, I would like to congratulate Ms. Friendly for the answer she gave Mr. Brown. It is accurate to say that, since this is a private member's bill, steps must be taken to ensure that there is no additional financial impact, to prevent the government from requiring royal recommendation to block the bill, which would be quite disastrous.

Mr. Brown's comments serve us well, as he has shown that it is the federal government that cut off funding. We are dependent upon its willingness to provide funding. Previous governments, including the Conservative government, have withdrawn funding that belonged to the provinces. For example, the equivalent of 25% of the budget in the form of transfers should be earmarked for health care. Over the past 15 years, it has been reduced to 15%. It was increased to 17%, but we can still see the difference.

Quebec made that choice, but we would like the program to also apply to other provinces, because they deserve to have a very good program. What's more, as long as they do not have a universal program like that, Quebec will continue to face pressure to whittle this program.

My question is very precise, and it deals with accountability. I am always astonished to see the extent to which you would like the Canadian government to oversee provincial accountability. That seems quite contradictory to me given the mandate devolved to the provinces, because the provinces are the ones responsible for child care services. It also seems to be needlessly dependent on the federal government. When the Quebec government wanted to opt out of the program and increase child care fees, there was an outcry. It is easier to exercise pressure on a provincial government than on a federal government.

What do you think about that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Ms. Colley.

[Sue Colley]

Thank you.

I would really like to congratulate the Province of Quebec for having taken such a strong step, in terms of the universality of child care in Canada. It is really unfortunate that most provinces have either not had the political will or the funding—and I think in most cases, it's the funding—to be able to emulate the kind of system that exists in Quebec.

Obviously what we are here to talk about today—and many others have come before us—is the importance of having federal funding, in order that we can begin to expand our services in a fashion like Quebec.

Personally, I think that Pauline Marois is a hero in Canada. Even though there has been a lot of negative criticism about the Quebec program, I think you will find that the research is about to be turned around. I understand that there's going to be a speech made at the Learning Societies in two days' time. A paper that's being produced basically shows that the accessibility of programs in Quebec are distributed proportionately to income across the entire province.

Hopefully we'll set some of the record straight on what is actually happening in Quebec, as opposed to many of these rumours that I know you are beleaguered by all of the time, and that we find difficult in the rest of Canada in terms of being able to emulate the programs.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Ms. Ballantyne, you have about 30 seconds left.

[Morna Ballantyne]

I think it was very helpful for Parliament to recognize Quebec as a nation within Canada, but implied in that recognition is that the rest of the provinces together form a nation. The federal government has always played an important role in exercising its spending power in developing programs that help build the nation as an identity.

What we're saying is that the federal government should exercise leadership and use its spending power to encourage the development of a program that will help the nation-building exercise outside of Quebec. It is essential, because it has not happened without federal leadership.

Given that these are federal dollars being spent and transferred to the provinces, it's absolutely essential that there be an accountability to the federal Parliament, because the authority for spending that money was made by the federal Parliament.

So it's very simple. We don't have difficulty with the accountability mechanism set out in the bill, as long as they don't apply to Quebec, because there has been recognition that Quebec is a distinct nation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Ballantyne. I'm sure Mr. Lessard appreciated that answer.

We're going to move to Ms. Chow, for five minutes please.

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

In my travels, sometimes I take the train, but other times I take Air Canada. There was an ad in the Air Canada magazine that talked about good choice. It said, “defining child care since 1988”. It had an actual statement of earnings available for every school, with no educational experience required. “The Goddard School is the franchise system for success-oriented entrepreneurs”--this is the Goddard School for Early Childhood Development. It is a child care franchise centre. It is asking Canadians to come and purchase this franchise to start up child care centres. The founder, Marijke Strachan, is not a teacher, she said. She doesn't have a degree in education, and yet she is running a preschool. It's in the ad itself. It boasts that the advertising department produced top-quality, award-winning print, TV, and radio advertisements, so that you too, without any education or training whatsoever, can start up your own child care centre.

Do we want profit-making companies to run education child care centres for our children? How does this bill deal with it?

[Martha Friendly]

No.

It's quite extreme.

[Claudette Pitre-Robin]

Ms. Marois' 1996 project aimed to transform all child care services into not-for-profit child care centres, which meant buying back child care centres. The government made a different choice when it realized just how many spaces it would have to offer. For the government, it was not possible to earmark funding to buy spaces that already existed, and so it decided to create new spaces. The question still arises in Quebec, because parents have access to $7-a-day spaces even in for-profit child care centres.

The current problem is that for-profit child care centres require parents to pay $5, $7, $8 and $10 in addition to the $7, even though they are funded by the government at a rate of 5% less than early childhood development centres. That child care system is based on a truly lucrative vision.

The government even initiated legal action against the owners of day care centres to force them to respect the $7 rate. It is very dangerous to develop that kind of child care service. We don't want all child care services to be identical, but we want to ensure that funding is truly earmarked for the education of young people by competent staff who are trained.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Ms. Colley.

[Sue Colley]

Ms. Chow, I think this is definitely not the way we want our early learning and child care system to go. In many ways it's terrible that Canada is the lowest spender and therefore the slowest industrialized country to get off the ground with early learning and child care, but at least it gives us the opportunity to learn from other countries' experiences. For example, as soon as there is substantial government funding in programs like child care, what you see internationally is that there suddenly becomes much more motivation for large corporations to be able to get involved with industrial expansion.

Australia is probably one of the most significant examples, because ten years ago they had a system exactly like ours today, which was dominated by not-for-profit centres. The government started introducing funding through tax credits and subsidy mechanisms in significant amounts, and what we now have in Australia is the development of a $3 billion boom industry, with profit margins of up to 58%, and $1.6 billion of that is flowed to those corporate gains through taxpayers' money.

So I think it is true--and I think Ms. Reid will also explain this--that when we have a system of child care where about 85% of the portion of expenditures has to go to wages, which is the most important ingredient in quality programming, and when we have such low wages as we have today, you will see there is not very much room for profit to be made in a child care centre. Consequently, what we are concerned about is not the existing programs that struggle probably in the same way as our not-for-profit centres struggle, but that if you expand the element of government funding, what ends up happening is that large corporate chains will buy all those centres.

A Gold Coast expert in Australia has said the government pays the subsidies, the parents pay the fees two weeks in advance. That's nice, because it's guaranteed, and property prices keep going up and up and up and that's where they make their asset values and increase their property 58%.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Colley.

We're now going to move to the last questioner of this round. Mr. Lake, five minutes, please.

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

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I have a couple of points to make right off the bat.

John, when you were talking about numbers, you said something about 1.5% of GDP should be spent on child care. I just did some quick math based on the GDP, and it confirms pretty much what we were saying. If you do the math, it works out to $21 billion, which is consistent with some of the conversation we've had in this committee.

I noticed, based on comments by several of the members of the panel today, that there seems to be a small group of vocal advocates, working together but dividing themselves for the purposes of the committee, who wield enormous influence and are somewhat funded by the former Liberal government. I think that just confirms my thoughts on that today.

I did note that Ms. Dhalla seemed very surprised when she discussed the fact that we would actually fulfill one of our five priorities by switching out the Liberal universal child care program to introduce our universal child care benefit for parents, thereby benefiting all families. I suppose the concept of a party doing what it says it's going to do is somewhat foreign to the Liberals, but that's just a side comment.

Lorna, I just wanted to comment. You made a point about 26 kids living in substandard conditions. I agree with you. I don't think you would find anybody who would disagree that it's a terrible situation. I think you mentioned that the social services department stepped in to remedy that situation. I appreciate the fact that they did that, because no one would advocate for anything even close to that type of situation. It's horrible, and I'm glad that social services stepped in.

I think one of you also mentioned that the Peel region has a population that is about 50% immigrants. I think that was the number you used. My own riding of Edmonton--Mill Woods--Beaumont is similar; it's in the 30% range. One of the cultural dynamics that I've witnessed and have an enormous amount of respect for is the tightness of family. It's incredibly important to the people in my riding. You have multiple generations living under the same roof. You have grandparents and aunts and uncles helping care for their kids. You have a tremendously strong work ethic, and everybody is doing what they can do. They make huge sacrifices.

The thing that I hear is that it's all about the kids. It's about making the best life possible for their children, and they work so hard to make that work. They don't wield political influence. They don't have large groups of people working for them on Parliament Hill or advocating for them; they just put their heads down, work as hard as they can, spend time with their family, and love their kids.

When I talk to them, they don't want their tax dollars going to fund other people's choices. Contrary to what some people would say, they really do appreciate the $1,200 per year they receive per child from the UCCB. It's a huge deal to them.

I know Ms. Dhalla's riding--and I think you mentioned that you're in her riding--is very similar. It's probably even more so, percentage-wise, than mine in that way. I'm always surprised at the stand she takes on a bill like this, because it's certainly not in the best interests of her constituents. It's not something that.... It just doesn't represent the values that I see. I'm curious what you say to those families that are working so hard, and this bill does absolutely nothing for them.

[Lorna Reid]

John and I would both like to speak to that.

One of the things that I could say to you is that when we talk about choices, there needs to be a range of choices. There are, in fact, a large number of families, and Malton is very close to the area that Ms. Dhalla represents. We turn children away every single day from that particular child care centre, so we have no sense of what other kinds of choices they're making. They may be going up the road, up Airport Road, to this particular kind of situation.

Also, those parents who are making the choice to stay at home need to be able to look at the other early-years services, such as parenting centres, Ontario Early Years Centres, the readiness centres, and so on. I remember that when I was at home on maternity leave, I wasn't part of the targeted group; I was an older mom. I, as much as anybody else, needed to have access to those parenting centres, but I couldn't, because of the situation I was in.

I don't see child care as being the only solution. There are ranges of things that people need at different times in their lives, and we're trying to build that range of services so that in a school, for example, where there is a child care centre, there's a parenting centre, and people can switch back and forth.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Lake, that's all the time we have.

Mr. Huether, do you want to add a quick comment?