Thank you for inviting me to appear before your committee.
I'm a member of the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care, but I speak to you today as the executive director of Child Care Now, Canada's national child care advocacy organization.
Early childhood education in Canada is far from what it should be. It's unavailable in many communities. Where it's available, wait-lists are long. The quality of programs is uneven. Although parent fees have dropped dramatically over the last year, licensed child care remains unaffordable for too many.
These problems result from the failure of past governments at all levels. For too long they refused responsibility for the provision of early learning and child care, relying instead on private individuals and organizations to set up programs on either a for-profit or a not-for-profit basis. This has meant unplanned, uneven and under supply.
Also, for far too long inadequate public funding has forced service providers to charge high service fees, putting licensed child care out of the financial reach of most families. At the same time, the parent fee revenue collected has never been sufficient to properly compensate educators for their work and to ensure decent working and learning conditions. This is why the child care sector has suffered from a perpetual problem of high staff turnover and it's why it's so difficult to recruit educators to the sector, especially graduates from early childhood education programs.
Almost always governments have responded to these problems ineffectively through short-term patchwork solutions such as salary top-ups, subsidies for some parents and inadequate operating grants of various kinds.
Child care advocates in Canada cheered when the Government of Canada proposed in budget 2021 to spend just under $30 billion over five years to transform early learning and child care. We celebrated the funding agreements with the provinces and territories, and we welcomed Bill C-35 because it affirms the federal government's long-term commitment to fund early learning and child care and to establish with the provinces and territories systems that could eventually realize every child's right to quality early childhood education.
Going by the experience of other countries, it will take many years to reach the goal declared in paragraph 6(a) of Bill C-35, to have a Canada-wide early learning and child care system that gives all families access to affordable, inclusive, high-quality early learning and child care programs regardless of where they live.
It will take time and it will take spending federal money in the right way on the right things.
That's why in our written submission we propose ways to strengthen the principles in clause 7 of Bill C-35 that are intended to guide federal investments. It's why we also suggest ways to strengthen the accountability mechanisms in the bill.
Unfortunately, I don't have time in my five minutes to expand on our proposed changes, but I do want to take my last minute to emphasize what we don't want changed.
We agree fully with the language in paragraph 7(1)(a) that supports the expansion of early learning and child care operated on a public and not-for-profit basis. It is consistent with the Canada-wide early learning and child care funding agreements agreed to by every province and territory, and it fulfills the promise made in the 2021 budget that was adopted by Parliament.
Federal public funds should be directed to expanding the provision of high-quality early learning and child care, not to expanding opportunities to make private profit or to increasing the equity of privately held real estate and other business assets.
Also, evidence from Canada and internationally tells us that not-for-profit and public early learning and child care providers are generally of higher quality and are more reliable and that public and not-for-profit child care systems are better at serving low-income families.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.