Human Resources Committee on March 31st, 2023

[Amélie Lainé]

As I said in my presentation, the indigenous friendship centres movement has existed for over 70 years in Canada, so it is clear that there are needs in terms of infrastructure, because it is often outdated.

In Quebec, we have been fortunate to have the support of the provincial government for this, so some centres have been able to improve access to their services. However, before we can offer families more services, we definitely have more infrastructure needs, so we can improve the space.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

That's wonderful.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mrs. Falk.

We'll now go to Mr. Coteau for the last five-minute round in the first hour.

Mr. Coteau, you have five minutes.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for being here and for their commitment to early learning and child care in this country. I know that, in my neighbourhood—the riding I represent, Don Valley East—this initiative is a very important one. It provides families with the ability to support their children through early learning. Also, it frees parents to participate more in the economy. I just want to thank everyone on our panel today for the work they're doing.

One issue brought up earlier, I believe, by all of our witnesses was around the monetization of the sector.

Ms. Olan-MacLean, you suggested there's a movement to monetize this sector. I believe you spoke about—I could be wrong—international investors and an international push into the sector, in order to monetize it. I wonder whether you could elaborate on that a bit more.

[Sheila Olan-MacLean]

It was actually Ms. Prentice who spoke to that. I'll give the floor to her.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thanks.

Go ahead, Ms. Prentice.

[Dr. Susan Prentice]

Yes, internationally, a number of private equity firms are moving into child care. A number of them are traded on the stock exchange. They are clearly interested in Canada. Unless the national legislative funding framework is strong enough, we will be a target for the kinds of acquisitions that have happened in other countries. That bankrupt Australian company I mentioned owned, at one point, child care programs in 13 different countries.

There is clearly an interest, among a number of operators, in making profits out of child care, not particularly in providing early learning and child care services. It will be very important for the legislation to put in parameters, so we can create child care as a public good, rather than as a profit opportunity for businesses.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

I agree with you 100% when we talk about the public good and looking for ways to stop the profit motive in child care, as a whole.

Can you give us some examples? I believe you said there was an example in Australia or Austria. Can you talk a bit about that failure?

[Dr. Susan Prentice]

In Australia—which is a federation much like Canada—under government changes in the early 1990s, child care funding switched. The kind of policy-scape that had promoted a primarily not-for-profit and community-based child care model across the country was overturned. It created a fresh environment in which entrepreneurs could get public dollars and reap private profits. Naturally, they seized this business opportunity. There was a virtual monopoly, at one point, when ABC Learning, one company, provided over 40% of the spaces in Australia. It went bankrupt. There's much more to say about this.

I want to observe that the legislation before you is an opportunity to strengthen non-profit and public delivery of child care. If we would like to avoid the spectacular policy disasters that have happened in other countries, we should strengthen the protections the the legislation proposes, while also ensuring it gives a clear definition of what early learning and child care services are, so nobody mistakes it as being the care of a child wherever the child is. Rather, we're speaking about licensed, regulated and quality services provided by child care professionals.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

I want to follow up on that point.

I think people would make the argument that, if you have more players in the system, you can build more capacity. Therefore, private companies participating in this space would actually expand capacity. We keep hearing from the Conservatives on this issue.

Since you want to focus specifically on the legislative piece, how do we establish, within the legislation, the parameters that allow for growth to happen and favour the public system over a private system?

[Dr. Susan Prentice]

The current legislation will permit the continued operation, of course, of existing for-profit child care programs. Clause 7 in the legislation specifically speaks to new funding. It's in the individual agreements with provinces, territories and indigenous governments that the action plans for expansion are laid out. It's in those plans, directly, that the implementation will occur. What the national legislation will do is provide the public protection.

Here's what I think: If you're giving $100 to a child care program so it can offer quality services, you do not want one penny of those dollars going into a private owner's pocket. You want 100 of those $100 going into the service, directly. Any time we take out the protections that restrict funding only to not-for-profit, you're effectively burning public dollars, letting them go to private owners and taking them away from the children, families and staff in the child care program.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Prentice.

That concludes the first round. I want to thank the witnesses for appearing and answering our questions.

We'll suspend for a moment while we invite in the next panel.

Again, witnesses, thank you for taking your time to appear before this committee this morning.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Welcome back to the committee. We'll resume the study of Bill C-35, an act respecting early learning and child care in Canada.

To assist the interpreters in their work, I will remind all members to speak slowly. That way, they can interpret properly.

You may choose to speak in the official language of your choice. Interpretation services are available in the room with a headset and for those appearing virtually by using the translation icon at the bottom of your screens. You have the option of speaking in the official language of your choice. If interpretation services issues or technical issues arise, please get my attention and we will suspend while they are being corrected.

I also will remind all members who are appearing virtually that screenshots are not allowed.

I would like to welcome our witnesses to begin our second round, where they will speak for five minutes.

I will advise you at five minutes and ask you to conclude your comments, because our time is running tight.

We have with us Leila Sarangi, national director at Campaign 2000; Emily Gawlick, executive director, Early Childhood Educators of British Columbia; and Christopher Smith, associate executive director with the Muttart Foundation.

We will begin with Ms. Sarangi for five minutes, please.

You have the floor.

[Leila Sarangi, National Director, Campaign 2000]

Good morning.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear today.

Campaign 2000 is a diverse, non-partisan coalition of over 120 organizations working to end child and family poverty. Together we represent every province and territory across the country. We came about in response to the 1989 unanimous all-party federal resolution to end child poverty by the year 2000. For more than 30 years, we have been tracking progress towards that goal through our annual reporting and putting forward achievable policy solutions. Campaign 2000 has long advocated for a system of high-quality, universally accessible child care as a key component of a broader plan to end child and family poverty.

We celebrated the historic budget 2021 announcement to develop a Canada-wide early learning and child care plan, and we were similarly pleased when this bill was introduced in Parliament. It provides a good framework for the establishment and longevity of a national child care system. We are particularly pleased that it strives to develop a child care system that contributes to the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and to meeting the sustainable development goals, and that it advances Canada's international human rights obligations, including those under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Poverty is a violation of our human rights. Child poverty in Canada remains persistent throughout the country. In our most recent report card, we found that in 2020 nearly one million children lived in poverty. That's 13.5% of all children or nearly one in eight. These rates increase dramatically for children from systemically marginalized groups. For example, first nations children living on reserve have a child poverty rate of 37.4%. For children in lone-mother-led families, it is at 30%. It is 19% for immigrant children and 8.6% for Black children, to name a few.

Childhood poverty is a traumatic experience that has lifelong impacts. Research shows inextricable links between poverty and children's ill health and negative developmental outcomes. However, research has also shown that high-quality early learning and child care can act as a protective factor from the harmful effects of poverty and also as an equalizer, improving long-term developmental and employment outcomes for those kids. Access to child care that is affordable and flexible can reduce pressures on family incomes, enabling families to participate in work, education or training and reducing a family's poverty risks.

The concluding observations from the most recent review of Canada's implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, released just last year, found that the committee is “deeply concerned” about the discrimination against and the marginalization of children, and that Canada is very far away from meeting the needs of indigenous, racialized and migrant children and children with disabilities, among others. One of their main focus areas of the concluding observations was to ensure that low-income families have access to programs and services without discrimination.

We want to ensure that, as this system is built out, it happens in a way that is accessible to these families. This would include, as we've proposed in our report cards, a $0- to $10-per-day sliding scale child care model in which $10 a day is the maximum a family would pay. We propose this because a $10-per-day program is out of reach for the families who are working in low-wage, precarious work or trapped in our woefully inadequate social and disability programs. The average income, for example, for a low-income single mother with two children is $26,703, and $10 a day would work out to roughly one-fifth of her income.

In our submission to you, we offer four recommendations to strengthen the bill. I won't go through them in detail, because you'll have them. What I will say though is that we have thought very carefully about the language we've proposed to strengthen and enhance the guiding principles. Access to the new early learning and child care system without discrimination must be made explicit for children from these groups, including children with disabilities, children without permanent immigration status and all children from low-income families.

We have also made recommendations to strengthen accountability by introducing requirements to the advisory committee to also report publicly to both Houses of Parliament and to any committee as they see fit, and we have recommended that reports from the advisory committee and the minister be based on broad consultation and appropriate disaggregated data and summarize how the new system is concretely advancing human rights obligations.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to answering any questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Sarangi.

Now we go to Ms. Gawlick for five minutes.

[Emily Gawlick, Executive Director, Early Childhood Educators of British Columbia]

Good morning, honourable Chair and committee members.

I'm honoured to be calling in from the land that I live, work and grow on, which is the unsurrendered traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, specifically the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish nations.

Through our obligations, ECEBC is compelled to think deeply, to listen with intention and to act ethically with commitments through the following lenses: the B.C. early learning framework, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, the ECEBC code of ethics, the indigenous early learning and child care framework, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Since 2011, ECEBC and our partner, the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of B.C., have been championing our own provincial $10-a-day child care plan. This plan advocates for a public child care system that addresses affordability, accessibility and quality, and we are heartened to see the success of the $10-a-day child care plan growing throughout Canada.

The essential factor for a quality system that supports children, families and communities is the early childhood educator profession. ECE in Canada is commonly perceived as a service for working parents rather than “a public good, of great social, cultural and political importance.” When early childhood education is understood and operated as a commodity to be purchased by consumers in a competitive market—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Ms. Gawlick, you muted yourself.

[Emily Gawlick]

I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Okay, please continue.

[Emily Gawlick]

When early childhood education is understood and operated as a commodity to be purchased by consumers in a competitive market, early childhood education is reduced to an economic transaction without consideration of educational values and purpose. From this perspective, early childhood educators are viewed as technicians only within a model of cost efficiency and minimum universal standards.

ECEBC supports the development of the national advisory council and the importance of the council to be accountable, to work with academics and educators, and to ensure we co-create a system that is not limited to a service but provides an educational space that all Canadian children deserve.

Current research asserts social policies and narratives that maintain our profession as gendered, racialized, marginalized and positioned as a secondary market force. However, we know that early childhood educators are much more than those narratives. Educators practice with ethical commitments as they co-construct lively curriculum with children.

For generations, the education of early childhood educators has evolved to reflect the diversities of children and families. Educators, who are predominantly female, have for too long shouldered inadequate working conditions, low wages, a lack of benefits and minimum professional recognition. During the global pandemic, it was highlighted how fragile the current funding and processes are, and how imperative it is to move forward to create a new Canada-wide social system that embeds a wage grid, higher post-secondary standards and healthy working conditions.

With federal leadership, a system can be developed that includes a fair wage grid that is reflective of education and experience and provides benefits for the workforce. Bill C-35 needs to ensure that the complexities and the pedagogy of this work is recognized, and that it holds provinces accountable for creating a system based on children's rights.

ECEBC is encouraged that this enactment honours indigenous rights and jurisdictions. We must demand this acknowledgement, identify and overcome barriers created by colonial systems and structures, and align our practices accordingly. We support and acknowledge that first nations, Métis and Inuit have autonomy. We commit to learn, listen and act in our ongoing work to decolonize our own practices, perspectives and professional education. ECEBC encourages everyone to make this commitment alongside us.

In my 30-plus years as an early childhood educator, I'm elated to see the investment and commitments from the federal government in the early years. Research has shown the importance of strong, ongoing investment in a public, not-for-profit, licence-based model. Bill C-35, an act respecting early learning and child care, takes a progressive leap forward in recognizing this through the lens of a child's right.

ECEBC is committed to working in partnership to ensure that this bill fosters a system that attracts and retains highly qualified early childhood educators and represents the diversity of Canada.

Thank you for allowing me to speak today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Gawlick.

Mr. Smith, you have five minutes, please.

[Dr. Christopher Smith, Associate Executive Director, Muttart Foundation]

Good morning, and thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear today before the committee in respect to Bill C-35.

My name is Christopher Smith, and I serve as the associate executive director of the Muttart Foundation. I'm joining you today from Treaty 6, which is the traditional ancestral territory of the Cree, Dene, Blackfoot, Saulteaux and Nakota Sioux peoples, as well as the traditional home of Métis peoples.

The Muttart Foundation is a private charitable foundation based in Edmonton, Alberta, whose funding interests and charitable activities include early learning and child care. Over the past two decades, the foundation has conducted research and convened and supported stakeholder consultations on the organization, financing and delivery of early learning and child care. We have undertaken this work in collaboration with governments, public institutions and civil society partners. Consistent with our charitable purpose, the foundation undertakes its work in support of the public benefit and in a non-partisan way.

The foundation's most recent early learning and child care work has two main areas of focus.

First, the foundation continues to work with a range of partners to advance the educational preparation, working conditions and compensation of early childhood educators. Despite a large body of research that highlights the foundational role professional, well-qualified educators play in the delivery of high-quality child care, early childhood educators across Canada remain underprepared, poorly supported and underpaid for their important work. The primary reliance on market-based approaches for the funding and delivery of child care has profoundly undervalued the work of early childhood educators. It has further resulted in governments historically struggling to recruit and retain the qualified educators they need to deliver high-quality child care.

The second focus of the foundation's work is on the roles local governments can play in the planning, management and delivery of early learning and child care. In those countries with well-developed, mature early learning and child care systems, local governments play central roles in ensuring that services are responsive to community needs, that they commonly support and deliver child care, and that they play active roles in making sure that services are developed where they are needed most and delivered in ways that advance public interests.

At present, in much of Canada outside of Ontario, local governments play more limited or discretionary roles in support of child care. The potential exists for this to change, with the appropriate support from the senior levels of government.

With respect to Bill C-35, the foundation commends the federal, provincial and territorial governments on their historic agreements to work collaboratively to transform Canada's early learning and child care sectors into systems that are more publicly funded, managed and planned. The commitment of the federal, provincial and territorial governments to work together on advancing early learning and child care has been a long time coming, as has the commitment of the necessary public funding to ensure that every child has access to high-quality child care.

The foundation also offers its support for the federal government's agreement with indigenous governments to advance early learning and child care for indigenous children and their families in ways that are distinctions-based and self-determined. This agreement is consistent with Canada's commitments under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and provides a basis for responding to the calls to action set out by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

The foundation views Bill C-35 as an important step in the longer and larger process of building the high-quality, affordable and inclusive early learning and child care systems that Canadian children and their families want and need. The bill affirms and reflects the collaborative nature of early learning and child care system building within the Confederation, and establishes the federal government's long-term commitment to the transformational change necessary to elevate early learning and child care as a public good.

The proposed commitment under clause 16 of the legislation to annual reporting on progress in system building is central to both maintaining public trust and ensuring the most effective use of public funds. This reporting should, therefore, be to Parliament, and it should provide parliamentarians—and, by extension, Canadians—with the opportunity to review and assess the work undertaken in support of system building.

Thank you for the opportunity to present today.

I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Smith.

Before we begin, I want to advise that we'll have one round of five minutes for each party, because I need to go in camera for committee business at roughly 10:30. Each party will get a five-minute questioning round.

We have Mrs. Gray for five minutes, please.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.

The first question I have is for Ms. Gawlick. We have heard from the government that they estimate we'll need to hire 40,000 new child care workers across Canada in the next three years. This doesn't even take into account waiting lists and potential retirements. I know that staffing is mentioned in your organization's brief as well, which you submitted to this committee. To meet this demand, various streams will have to be used, whether it's post-secondary training or immigration. All of those take time.

From your expertise, do you see this as feasible within less than three years, based on the current actions that have been taken so far?

[Emily Gawlick]

Thanks for that question.

Absolutely, I think there have been really good strides, particularly here in British Columbia, to support the sector to continue on with their education and to meet the demands. Definitely the demand is huge in this province as well as in other provinces and territories. I think that a really strong strategy needs to be in place to address the education of early childhood educators, and at the same time there are no real shortcuts. Our organization's biggest concern is that decision-makers will try to fast-track what is needed in this sector and this profession.