Good morning. Thank you.
I submitted a brief by the March 17 deadline, and my comments today draw on it. My brief is more comprehensive than what I will have time to speak to today.
I'm a university professor, a sociologist. I have published widely on historical and contemporary child care policy. I actually earned my Ph.D. for a study of child care in Toronto during World War II and the campaign to save the wartime day nurseries.
I appreciate that your job is to scrutinize the legislation and propose amendments as necessary, and I would like to help. I have two main points.
First, the most important step that I believe your committee can take is to introduce a definition of “early learning and child care” early in the act, right after the short title in the definitions section. I propose that your definition should look something like this: “Early learning and child care is a system of regulated and licensed services provided by qualified early childhood educators who have specialized post-secondary education training.”
Yesterday in committee, a member read from a brief that suggests “child care is the care of a child, regardless of who provides the care”, and I urge you to see the folly in this kind of definition for the purposes of legislation. Let me explain why.
In my house, when my spouse and kids are sick, I get out the thermometer, I make them hot lemon with ginger and I provide over-the-counter pain medication. I am of course providing health care, but you would in no way reasonably want to include what I do under health care legislation or funding. In our Winnipeg home, we have smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, and we keep our fire extinguishers fully charged. We're practising fire hygiene, but we in no way belong to public firefighting.
Similarly, early learning and child care does not mean and cannot mean care of a child wherever it occurs. It means instead a very particular kind of out-of-home early learning and child care service, one that is regulated, licensed and provided by qualified early childhood education professionals.
Your bill needs this kind of definition.
I have a second major recommendation on clause 7 on funding. The commitment to public and not-for-profit investments must be strengthened, and in my brief I provide some textual direction.
The current language directs funding in particular to public and not-for-profit providers, and it's much weaker than it should be. Keeping taxpayer dollars out of private pockets is strikingly important. It provides protection for the child care ecosystem. It ensures maximally efficient use of public dollars, and it acts as a bulwark against the negative effects on quality staffing and regulations exerted by a lobby for commercial child care, particularly those parties with obligations to shareholders.
It would be very valuable for your committee to review the experience of Australia, beginning in the 1990s. In Australia, a series of decisions about small policy and funding changes set in motion a massive expansion of for-profit child care, including a virtual monopoly. On November 6, 2008, Australia's largest single child care chain went into receivership.
The bankruptcy of this one national day care chain left more than 1,000 child care centres, over 120,000 children and 16,000 child care educators in the lurch. The Australian government had to step in to keep the lights on until a fire sale could happen. It's been called a spectacular public policy disaster. It was directly triggered by permitting public funds to go to for-profit child care businesses.
Knowing this history makes it crystal clear why Bill C-35 should prohibit public funding of commercial child care operations.
Those are my two main points. There are more in the brief. I look forward to our discussion.
Thank you.