Human Resources Committee on March 31st, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), our study on the federal contribution to reducing poverty in Canada will continue today, and I want to thank the witnesses for taking time out of their busy schedules to be here.

With us today we have Andrew Lynk from the Canadian Paediatric Society. We have Jody Dallaire from the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, as well as Leilani Farha from the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action. I want to thank all of you for being here today and taking the time.

We're going to look at a presentation from each of you for up to 10 minutes. We'll start with you, Jody, and then we'll move across the table, then we'll start with a couple of rounds of questions. The first round will be seven minutes for questions and answers from the members, and we'll follow with a second round of five minutes, so if there are things on which you've been able to pique the curiosity of the members, I'm sure they'll ask you, or maybe they'll want to follow up on something you've suggested as we move forward.

Why don't we just get started. Jody, I'm going to start with you. You have 10 minutes for your presentation. Thank you very much.

[Jody Dallaire, Chair, Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada]

Thank you. I wanted to mention that we are going to be submitting a formal brief outlining all the points I'll be making today, with some precise recommendations.

I wanted to begin by thanking the committee for inviting us to come to inform the study on the federal government's role in reducing poverty in Canada. I represent an organization called the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada. Our organization recommends that the federal government assume a leadership role in the development of a high-quality, universal, pan-Canadian child care system. This system will accomplish multiple social and economic benefits for children, families, and the economy. Chief among these benefits is poverty reduction.

Improving child care services will reduce poverty by increasing family incomes in three important ways. By improving child care availability, we support parents in maintaining and increasing their labour force attachment. Labour force attachment itself is essential to poverty reduction, although, as others will have described, it's in no way a guarantee. By improving child care affordability, we reduce parent fees, lowering the cost associated with increased labour force attachment. By improving child care quality, we support children's healthy development. In the long term, this leads to improved educational outcomes and earnings.

We acknowledge up front that child care services is only one of several components that are essential in an effective poverty reduction strategy. The CCAAC supports the recommendations of our partner organizations, such as Campaign 2000 and others, who call for a federal role in the development of a set of complementary policies that together will increase family income and promote well-being.

Given the focus of our work, this presentation will focus specifically on child care's role within a poverty reduction strategy. It is based on what we've learned from parents, from caregivers, from communities across Canada, and from research in international studies.

We have four points to make: the parents approach to child care outside of Quebec is not working, quality universal access is essential, federal leadership is required, and accountability is key.

In terms of our first point, that Canada's approach is not working, outside of Quebec only 12% of children under the age of 12 have access to regulated child care. Parent fees are among the highest in the developed world, often exceeding the annual cost of university, and quality is constantly undermined by the low wages and poor retention rates of the college-trained early childhood educators.

Why is this happening? Canada relies on a market-based approach to child care. Community groups and entrepreneurs build and deliver services according to their priorities, with government involvement limited to fee subsidies for low-income parents and wage subsidies for low-income staff. But 30 years of experience with this approach in Canada confirms that the market has failed to deliver high-quality, affordable, accessible child care services for children, families, and communities.

The crisis in child care in Canada outside of Quebec has been confirmed by a series of international studies. In 2006 the OECD reported that Canada has the lowest early learning and child care access rate in 20 developed countries and invests the least public funds of the 14 reporting countries. In December 2008 the UNICEF research centre released report card eight, The Child Care Transition, which compared a range of family policies, including child care, in 25 rich countries. Once again, Canada ranks last.

Shamefully, we only achieved one out of ten benchmarks established based on commitments that Canada and most other nations have signed on to in order to uphold the rights of our youngest citizens. Canada fails on the most fundamental benchmark, as it does not have a national plan with priorities for the disadvantaged. Canada fails to provide enough early learning and child care spaces, fails to ensure that minimum quality standards are met, and fails to invest 1% of GDP in early childhood services. Canada also fails to ensure a near-universal access to the essential child care health services. As a result of these policy failures, it's not surprising to see that Canada fails to achieve a poverty rate of less than 10%.

The UNICEF report card adds to the body of evidence showing that jurisdictions that advance quality universal child care are more likely to have lower family poverty rates. While many European and Nordic countries are examples to look to, results in Quebec are also noteworthy. Since introducing its family policy in 1997, with child care as a key component, child and family poverty rates have dropped in Quebec, and women's labour force participation and incomes have risen substantially.

Quality is essential because good child care is good for all children, with additional benefits for vulnerable children, but poor-quality child care can cause harm. Evidence of the benefits of quality child care is so established in science that any claims to the contrary lack credibility. They're the equivalent of claiming that the earth is flat.

Child care in Canada is in crisis, which has been fuelled by the cutting of the bilateral agreements signed with the provincial and territorial governments. While progress in child care under these earlier agreements was painfully slow, it is clear that federal leadership did make a difference. As a result of the current federal cuts to child care funding transfer payments to provinces, B.C. has cut operating funding to child care programs, and today we're facing the potential loss of thousands of subsidized child care spaces in Ontario and cuts to child care programs in New Brunswick.

The problem with the dedicated child care transfer agreements established in 2003 and in 2005 under SUFA is that they neither required nor adequately funded a fundamental shift towards an accountable, publicly funded system. But replacing federal-provincial agreements with cash transfer payments--the UCCB--is not the answer to child care problems in Canada.

In 2007 the number of regulated spaces in Canada grew by only 3%, the lowest increase in a decade. Given the persistently high fees for parents and the ongoing problems with staff recruitment and retention, it is clear that the unaccountable universal child care benefit is not building the range of affordable and available quality programs that parents need to support their labour force attachment.

While accountability for the federal child care transfers to provinces and territories has long been a concern of the CCAC, the current federal government's claim to be spending three times as much money on child care raises even more concerns. If the current federal government is spending three times more than the previous federal government, Canadians are justified in asking why access to quality affordable child care has not tripled as a result.

Why, in fact, is the child care crisis in Canada continuing to grow? The answer? None of the federal funding is accountable to improve quality affordable child care services. Therefore, in order to realize progress in child care services in Canada, and to fulfill our human rights obligations to children and women, accountability must be measured within conditional transfers to provinces and territories.

In conclusion, establishing a federal role in poverty reduction comes at the perfect time, as we are experiencing the worst economic slowdown since the Great Depression, with thousands of Canadians losing their jobs. This economic downturn provides Canada with the opportunity to catch up with our peer nations in supporting the employability of parents in a meaningful way and overcoming one of the most stubborn poverty traps: the lack of affordable and available child care services. A federal investment in child care will provide a double benefit. It will allow parents to work and upgrade their skills while compensating children at risk due to their family's social and economic circumstances.

We have four recommendations.

We recommend that the federal government take a leadership role in adopting a federal poverty reduction strategy and that child care be part of the strategy used.

Our second recommendation is that the government use federal spending power to establish, through legislation, an early learning and child care policy framework that will attain the goals of service affordability, universal entitlement, and quality non-profit and/or public delivery. This framework should set conditions under which provincial and territorial governments can access funding, while recognizing that Quebec has already the foundations of a provincial child care program and should receive its funding unconditionally.

Our third recommendation is to commit adequate and conditional funding to the provinces and territories, with accountability.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Did you want to finish your other proposal?

[Jody Dallaire]

Two components of the transfers should be direct operating funding and non-profit public delivery.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much for that presentation, which was right on the money and right on the time, Mrs. Dallaire.

We're now going to move to Ms. Farha. Thank you, and you have 10 minutes as well.

[Leilani Farha, Member of the Steering Committee, Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action]

Thank you. The Feminist Alliance for International Action very much appreciates this opportunity to appear before this committee and to make this submission.

For those of you who don't know, FAFIA is a coalition of over 75 Canadian women's equality-seeking and related organizations. We are interested in participating in this committee because poverty disproportionately affects women, and particular groups of women, and because in the face of the current economic crisis, we anticipate that women's poverty is worsening and will only continue to do so.

Our submissions this morning focus on the following three points: first, that the Government of Canada has a legal obligation to combat poverty; second, that the federal government has the jurisdiction and the resources to combat poverty; and third, any measures adopted to combat poverty must be clearly focused on addressing women's poverty, the distinct causes and consequences, and must be based on human rights principles.

Let me turn to the first. The Government of Canada has a legal obligation to combat poverty. This obligation comes from the international human rights treaties that Canada has signed and ratified, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

The Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights guarantees everyone the right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food and housing. In that regard, in 2006 the committee at the UN responsible for monitoring Canada's compliance with that covenant expressed concern with the numbers of people living in poverty in Canada, and that poverty rates remain very high, particularly for low-income women and single mothers.

In 2008 when CEDAW reviewed Canada, they expressed similar concerns; in particular, that poverty is widespread among particular groups of women, including aboriginal women, minority women, and single mothers. The committee then linked women's poverty to four particular issues: one, a lack of affordable quality child care spaces; two, the absence of a national housing strategy and adequate housing; three, the cuts to and inadequacy of social assistance rates in relation to the actual cost of living; and finally, four, violence against women.

Most recently, the UN Human Rights Council, under the Universal Periodic Review where states are reviewing states, expressed concern regarding the high rates of poverty and homelessness in an affluent country like Canada. In turn, several very concrete recommendations as to how the Government of Canada might address poverty amid such affluence have emerged from the United Nations human rights system. For example, the Government of Canada has repeatedly been called on to develop a national strategy to eliminate poverty; establish a national poverty line; integrate economic and social rights into poverty reduction strategies; establish minimum standards for the provision of funding to social assistance programs applicable at the federal, provincial, and territorial levels; and establish a monitoring mechanism to ensure the accountability of these mechanisms so these mechanisms work for women.

Let me move to my second point. The federal government has the jurisdiction and the resources to combat poverty. Under international human rights law and Canada's treaty obligations, ultimately the federal government has the primary responsibility for combatting poverty, notwithstanding the federalist structure of Canada. Treaty monitoring bodies have been clear about this.

The current government often rejects this obligation, arguing jurisdictional issues; in other words, that social and economic entitlements like social assistance are squarely within provincial jurisdiction and therefore not a federal responsibility. This position is not only contrary to international human rights law, but it also ignores the Government of Canada's spending power. This spending power allows a legislature--as I'm sure you all know--to spend the money it has the constitutional authority to collect and manage, including spending in areas for which it does not have legislative authority or jurisdiction. In other words, the Government of Canada can use its spending power to support a national strategy to combat poverty.

To ensure that any standards or strategies are national, the Government of Canada can attach conditions, of course, to the moneys it provides to the provinces and territories. This has been done historically. For example, the conditions attached to the transfer to the provinces for income support under the Canada assistance plan provide right-to-income support benefits based on need and are irrespective of province of residence.

On my third point, any measures adopted to combat poverty must be clearly focused on combatting women's poverty and based on human rights. Canada is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and yet, even when women's poverty rate is at its lowest, one woman in eight lives below the poverty line. Furthermore, there are high rates of poverty for particular groups of women.

The statistics are uncontested, and I'm not going to run through all of them for you. The Ontario plan, the Quebec plan, and the Newfoundland and Labrador plan outline and confirm that the statistics are bad. When you see numbers showing that 57% of African Canadian women are poor, you know this is an issue that is of huge concern to women.

We submit that a national strategy to combat poverty that is based on a social rights or human rights framework can challenge the systemic causes of poverty and provide concrete guidelines for assessment to ensure that the strategy actually meets the needs of those it is intended to benefit.

For example, a national poverty strategy based on human rights or social rights would be measured and measurable against the following standards: Does the strategy take into account the precarious situation of disadvantaged and marginalized individuals or groups such as women? Is the strategy comprehensive, coherent, and coordinated? For example, does the strategy address the significant determinants of women's poverty, such as violence, the availability of adequate housing, adequate social assistance rates, and adequate and affordable child care? Is the strategy non-discriminatory? Is priority given to grave situations or situations of risk?

There are other benchmarks that a human rights framework provides. I can speak to those if there are questions on that.

A human rights plan to combat poverty could also ensure a mechanism for individual entitlement claims, allowing those living in poverty to feel some individual ownership of the right to an adequate standard of living. It would keep parliamentarians in touch with people whose dignity interests are at stake. It would continually refashion and remodel the strategy to be inclusive of groups and individuals who are left out or neglected. It would allow an interpretation of entitlement, in light of women's actual circumstances.

FAFIA would like to make the following recommendations to this committee regarding the federal government's role in combatting poverty.

First, in keeping with Canada's international human rights obligations, the Government of Canada must show leadership on the issue of poverty in this country by exercising its spending power and adopting a national strategy to combat poverty that is focused on those experiencing the deepest poverty, namely, women and particular groups of women.

A national strategy to combat poverty must have conditions attached to it to ensure the compliance of provinces and territories, with the exception of Quebec. It must be based on a social rights framework. It must incorporate or somehow be directly linked to initiatives to ensure the key determinants of poverty for women are addressed, such as violence against women, adequate housing, adequate levels of social assistance, and access to affordable child care spaces. It must challenge and rectify the systemic inequalities that create women's poverty.

FAFIA thinks the time is ripe. We have provincial and territorial plans springing up across the country. We're in the midst of a severe economic crisis. We have plenty of direction from the international community and the UN human rights system.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're now going to move to Mr. Lynk, for 10 minutes.

[Dr. Andrew Lynk, Chair, Action Committee for Children and Teens, Canadian Paediatric Society]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, members of the committee, for having us here today. My name is Andrew Link. I chair the Canadian Paediatric Society advocacy committee and I'm a general pediatrician from Cape Breton. It's snowed in today, but I got out anyway.

We represent 2,000 pediatricians across the country. Every two years, we produce an annual report card on indicators of child health and well-being, comparing provinces and territories and the federal government on how they are doing. For this year, for 2009, we will be including how the different provinces and territories and the federal government are doing when it comes to child poverty.

I want to open with a statement from a UNICEF report on child poverty in rich countries back in 2006. It's something I think all pediatricians take to heart. It says: “The true measure of a nation’s standing is how well it attends to its children--their health and safety, their material security, their education and socialisation, and their sense of being loved, valued, and included” as valued citizens, regardless of the economic standing into which they were born.

I've worked as a physician in downtown Vancouver, looking after residents from the east side of Vancouver, where we have seen through the news and papers recently the terrible convergence of poverty, addiction, and mental illness. I worked in the refugee camps in Ethiopia back in the mid-1980s, during the famine, and saw the extreme effects of diseases, of poverty, and of hunger. I've worked in the small reserves of northern Ontario and have seen tuberculosis spread through overcrowded housing, with children and babies being affected. I've worked with immigrant families new to Canada in downtown Toronto. I've been in Cape Breton for 20 years.

I must say that if I had to take a choice between being a poor Ethiopian farmer and a homeless resident in downtown east Vancouver, I think I'd take my chances as the farmer. Just on Friday, before coming here, I saw a family in the office. The father is an out-of-work painter with two teenage sons who are learning disabled. They had a loaf of bread and a jar of jam to last them until payday on Wednesday. The parents were going to go without. The father had terrible dental disease and was putting pieces of onion into the cavities to take down some of the pain.

That's something pediatricians see every day across our wards, our emergency rooms, and our offices. We see the damage, both short-term and long-term. We see the lost opportunities for these children and their families. There are more than a million of them and their families out there. I know each of the MPs here around the table hear those same stories and see those same families, because they come to you as well.

I would like to say that poverty, and child poverty in particular, is more than just a social justice issue or a political embarrassment. We would frame it also as a public health issue.

Child poverty entails increased negative health outcomes for children: increased prematurity; low birth weight, which increases long-term developmental disability; increased obesity, because kids who are living in poverty often eat high-calorie, low-nutrient foods that are cheap; and all of the attendant problems that long-term obesity will bring upon themselves and the health care system. We see increased rates of injury and death from injury; teen pregnancies; delinquent behaviours; visual and hearing problems; and decreased academic outcomes, school readiness, post-secondary training and education, and participation in cultural and recreational opportunities. In other words, child poverty poisons the developing brain and the spirit.

We at the CPS are concerned that in the last 15 years before the recession hit, which was a long period of economic prosperity, the poverty rates in Canada actually increased and the gaps between rich and poor increased. We're very concerned, and I share the concern of the two speakers who have gone before me about what's going to happen to these kids and their families with the current recession.

One in six kids in Canada lives below the poverty line. One in two new Canadian kids lives below the poverty line. One in two kids with a single mom lives below the poverty line. One in four children with disabilities lives below the poverty line. One in four aboriginal children on reservations, and one in three off reservations, lives below the poverty line. That's a lot of children out there, a lot of potential harm, and a lot of long-term benefits and outcomes lost to our society and to the individuals themselves.

We at the CPS believe that child poverty rates and poverty rates in general should have the same political importance as rates of interest, employment, inflation, and wait times for adult health care. We're not experts on low-income cut-offs, pre-tax or post-tax. We're not experts on market basket measures. We're not experts on working income tax benefits, welfare walls, or federal-provincial transfers. However, we are experts on child health and well-being, and we're experts on designing interventions that work. That's what we do for a living.

We know that the resolution passed by the parliamentarians back in 1989, vowing to end child poverty by 2000, was unrealistic and it was empty political rhetoric at its worst. We shouldn't see that repeated here.There were a million kids without a voice hoping that something was going to happen, and as I said before, things did get worse. As was alluded to earlier, the 1999 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which we signed on to, asked for adequate standards of living for all children.

Whatever measures the federal government and the provincial and the territorial governments decide to include, they have to include income supports, affordable housing, education and training for parents, accessible mental health care, quality accessible child care and early learning, and recreational and cultural opportunities.

I just want to use a different model, if I can, a paradigm in pediatrics. I have an interest in childhood cancer. Back in the early 1960s, if you had childhood leukemia the death rate was 100%. You would last a few months and you would die. A group of dedicated pediatricians got together, and they had resources, they had targets, they had timelines, they took some low-technology drugs and tried them. It worked, and they got the rate up to a 10% survival rate. Then they took a different group and they tried to tweak things a bit, and they got it up to 15%, then 20%. Now in 2009 the survival rate is over 92%.

That was because people set targets, they set timelines, they studied it, they thought about it, and they cared about it. We can do the same for child poverty.

Canada ranked 12th out of 21 in rich countries, under UNICEF's 2000 child poverty report, when it came to child poverty and well-being measures. We're well behind the Scandinavian countries, as usual, that have comparable measures of wealth. It really is a call for us to do better.

Ireland and the U.K. have poverty reduction strategies, and they have worked. There have been some bumps in the road. Quebec, I understand, in 2004, Newfoundland and Labrador in 2006, and this year Ontario have committed to do the same with targets and timelines and plans and resources--no more empty rhetoric.

We would argue that child poverty is a cancer in the Canadian body politic. You can't improve cure rates of child cancer without a plan, as we've said.

We would ask the federal government for four things--maybe more, but four today. We will provide you with a written report in both French and English. We were actually just writing it up when we got called to come before the committee, and it will be out in a few months. We will provide the committee with that.

There are four things we would ask. We would have the federal government insist, maybe by tying it to federal-provincial transfers--I don't know if you can do that or not, you're the experts--that all provinces and territories have poverty reduction strategies with targets and timelines and resources, aiming for the UNICEF goal of less than 10% in the next 10 years. That would also include regular progress reports to Canadians.

Second, we would ask that the federal government facilitate the sharing of evidence-based and best-practice social policy research when it comes to strategies and interventions.

Third, the federal government and the Assembly of First Nations should be jointly held accountable for the shameful level of child poverty among first nations children. We need to have resourced reduction programs for children living on reserves, again with targets and timelines.

Last, we would agree with our first speaker that high-quality child care improves the cognitive and behavioural outcomes of disadvantaged kids. We know that child care can be expensive and it's a barrier to employment for single mothers and low-income mothers and families. We know that Canada's own chief of public health, in his 2008 report, said that for every dollar you invest in the early years saves between $3 to $9 in future spending in the health and criminal justice systems, as well as in social assistance. The federal government must include the provision of affordable, accessible, and high-quality child care, and early learning is an integral part of any effective poverty reduction strategies.

On behalf of the nation's 2,000 pediatricians and the children and families and youth whom we serve, we really appreciate the opportunity to present before you today. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Lynk. We appreciate that.

As a matter of housekeeping, some of the questions will be asked in French. I don't believe Ms. Minna will be asking questions in French this round, but there will be French on the next round for sure. English translation will be on either channel one or two.

We're going to start with our first round, which will be seven minutes for questions and answers. We're going to start with Ms. Minna.

The floor is yours.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and I thank all of you.

I have to say that everything you said this group has heard over and over again. I am not saying this to belittle what you said. I am saying this to kick all of us in the pants and to say let's shake our heads. What are we doing? This is 2009 now.

I have to say that because I sat here listening to the three--and I've met some of you before--feeling extremely frustrated and thinking to myself, I know this stuff already. We all do. It's not that I don't have to hear it again, because it is good to hear it again. I only say that maybe as a message to ourselves that we really have to get on with it.

I want to ask a couple of things. The last comment you made, Mr. Lynk, which was also mentioned earlier by Jody Dallaire, was with respect to the cognitive outcomes and the assistance.

I am assuming that when you talk about child care, Ms. Dallaire, you're talking about early education and child care; you're not just talking about child care. I assume that you are talking about quality, accessible child care and the cognitive development aspect of it as well. That makes a big difference.

I want us to get down to some nitty-gritty. We have now what is called a universal child care program of $1,200. Does that do it? I think we need to get to some clear answers on what's working and what's not. Does that do it? I don't call it child care, but that's what it's called right now.

[Jody Dallaire]

As I mentioned in our presentation, it hasn't been working. We've seen some of the lowest growth rates in early learning and child care in the past decade, since the implementation of the universal child care benefit. The challenge with the benefit is that it is unaccountable to actually create child care spaces unless parents pool their money together to actually build programs. It's not going to create the spaces that are lacking in communities.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

When we had the Caledon Institute and a couple of others here, one of the things that were discussed was the pooling of money that we are now spending, like the child tax credit, the child care tax credit, and other moneys that we are spending in bits and pieces all over, pooling it into a strong national program for early education and child care and income support. Is that something you would be in support of looking at? I was just going to ask both of you, from your perspective, if you would take the child care tax credit, take all of that, and lump it together to create a national child care program as opposed to having the tax credit process at all--to just have direct funding.

I'll ask that question, and then I will ask those on the poverty side.

[Jody Dallaire]

I guess there are two issues with the child tax credit. It aims to attain a different objective, which is providing families with adequate income, which is important. But with early learning and child care, what we have been advocating for the past 25 years as an organization is that unless we fundamentally shift--

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I am sorry to interrupt. I am not talking about the $1,200. I am talking about the child care tax credit.

[Jody Dallaire]

I understand. I guess what I am saying is that as a society we need to decide if we want to provide adequate income as well. I know some other organizations have been calling to continue--

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

That would be the child tax benefit, though, which is less extreme.

[Jody Dallaire]

Yes, that's correct, but in terms of child care, unless we fundamentally shift the way we do things, so that we provide direct operating grants to programs--

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

So you are saying we ought to have a national program rather than a tax credit system, and direct funding--

[Jody Dallaire]

Directly, with accountability.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Of course. That is a given for me. I fully understand that.

Mr. Lynk, did you want to add to that?

[Dr. Andrew Lynk]

I would agree with that.

There are two issues. One is that there are not enough spaces especially to help lift low-income families and low-income moms out of poverty.

Second, if you really want to make a difference when it comes to improving outcomes for early child care and learning, that is, cognitive outcomes of school readiness--being ready to go when you start primary or grade one--and also behavioural and socialization outcomes, there have to be standards. That is where the federal government comes in. There has to be quality day care. There cannot be 20 kids and one person who is underpaid and overwhelmed looking after 20 small toddlers, some in diapers. That's not going to cut it. So there have to be national standards and moneys attached to that.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I understand that.

[Jody Dallaire]

If I could add one last thing, the CCAAC does have a model out there. It's called “From Patchwork to Framework”. We outline a 15-year strategy, because it's not something that's built overnight.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Do you want to share that with us?

[Jody Dallaire]

Absolutely, I can certainly forward that after today. It provides an example, over 15 years, of how you actually build a national child care program.