Human Resources Committee on April 18th, 2023

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Why do you feel francophone day care centres should be treated differently?

[Jean-Luc Racine]

I feel it's essential. We have very distinct needs. The dynamics in our communities are often very different from those in the anglophone community.

Take, for example, family-based services. We often see day care centres start to accept anglophone children, then gradually become bilingual and eventually turn into anglophone centres. That challenge doesn't exist on the English side. However, it's very much a reality on the French side. So we need to support the French side.

I know that we don't have a lot of time, but I could give you several examples to show how very different things are on the French side.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Finally, why do you want to include francophones?

[Jean-Luc Racine]

It's crucial, because I can tell you that if francophones aren't included in the bill, they won't be considered.

Existing agreements will eventually expire. Once they have, they will be renegotiated by new governments that will look to the legislation resulting from this bill. Therefore, the bill must include obligations towards francophones. It's essential.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

I have one last question.

We're seeing labour shortages across the country. In your opinion, why do francophone realities more urgently require attention than the realities of others?

[Jean-Luc Racine]

You know that it's a very small market. When educators leave, it's very hard to replace them. In British Columbia, for example, we're being forced to close day care centres due to a shortage of educators. It's an extremely difficult and distressing situation.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Bérubé.

Madam Gazan will conclude this round for two and a half minutes.

Go ahead, Ms. Gazan.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much.

Going back to you, Dr. Japel, one of my concerns in terms of licensing is that there need to be certain standards in place. I was an early childhood educator in my former life, and then a trained teacher. We had a set curriculum in both—both public—and our funding was dependent on teaching the curriculum, so it was mandated.

Is that part of the issue in terms of actually having greater regulation to ensure that children have the same level of quality in education? People often confuse child care with babysitting, and it's not. It's early childhood education. Is that part of the issue, would you say?

[Dr. Christa Japel]

In Quebec, we have a program, Accueillir la petite enfance, and it should be implemented. It should be used in every setting, whether it's for-profit, not-for-profit or home-based care.

The rules and regulations could be a little bit more precise to have parameters that guarantee more quality. I'm just thinking about the amount of space that's allocated for a child from three to five in a centre-based place. It's 3.75 square metres per child, and that includes movable furniture. We live in a country where we have six months of winter. It is not enough. I'm talking about things like that, which are really important. Do we have to have a courtyard for the children? Not necessarily. If there's a park 500 metres away, that will do. These are all quality elements, but I think we—

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Yes, it's quality control. For example, in an early childhood care centre, you have to have things like a sand table, a certain number of manipulatives out, a certain number of books so that you can teach a curriculum. When it's not regulated—

[Dr. Christa Japel]

There is no.... What do you do?

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Is that a problem?

[Dr. Christa Japel]

It is a problem, and I think a curriculum also makes sure that we are providing activities that foster the global development and also makes sure of what we need in terms of material. People need to be guided, and a lot of people don't have that training.

They're nice people; I'm not saying that they're bad people, but they don't have the training.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Madame Japel and Ms. Gazan.

That concludes the first hour. I want to thank the witnesses for coming back again and giving your testimony to this committee on an important piece of legislation, as you so clearly articulate. Again, thank you.

Committee members, we will suspend for a few moments while we get ready for the next group of panellists.

Again, thank you so much for coming.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

I will remind those appearing in the room and virtually that you can choose the official language of your choice. Interpretation services are available. In the room, use the microphone that's attached to you. Those appearing virtually can choose the language with the icon at the bottom of your Surface laptop. If we lose interpretation services, please get my attention. We'll suspend while it's being corrected.

I'll remind the new members that no screenshots of the proceedings of the committee in the room are permitted. Please wait until I recognize you by name before you begin to speak. At this time, I'll also remind committee members that when you're posing questions, please identify which witness you wish your question to be directed to.

We'll begin by introducing Kim Hiscott, executive director, Andrew Fleck Children's Services; Marni Flaherty, acting chief executive officer, Canadian Child Care Federation; and Maggie Moser, Ontario Association of Independent Childcare Centres.

We will begin with Ms. Hiscott for five minutes.

Ms. Hiscott, welcome to the committee. You have five minutes for your opening statement.

[Kim Hiscott, Executive Director, Andrew Fleck Children's Services]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before this committee.

I am the executive director of Andrew Fleck Children’s Services, which is a multi-site, multiservice, not-for-profit agency here in Ottawa. This commitment to early learning is something I have dreamed about for decades, and the generational, long-term influence on children and families will support Canada beyond what we can even imagine.

I echo the comments from others that Bill C-35 can be strengthened by adding a robust, clear definition of “early learning and child care”.

Andrew Fleck Children’s Services has been around since 1911. We have a license capacity of over 3,000 spaces in our group sites and home child care. When we shared with our families that our fees would be reduced, the relief was palpable. We heard stories like this:

We haven't been able to save for a house since my child started daycare, it was almost as much as my rent. We thought we definitely would not be able to afford having another child either. This will change our lives so very much that we finally don't have to feel like we are drowning just to have quality care since we could not afford to stay home either.

However, as you know, affordability is only one component of respecting early learning and child care in Canada. I would like to focus on what else we need to pay attention to, including appropriately compensating and supporting early childhood educators, the expansion of not-for-profit licensed child care and the modernization of licensed home child care. I submitted a brief that expands on these points.

For decades, not-for-profits have kept our parent fees as low as possible to support families and the affordability of licensed child care. This came at the expense of the dedicated individuals working with children and those who support them. With 80% to 85% of our budgets attributed to compensation, we know that employees have subsidized the sector, and we are now experiencing the consequences of this approach. Not only are fewer individuals interested in obtaining their credentials; committed, experienced educators are leaving for other opportunities.

We have models in Ontario, and likely elsewhere, in which the role of an early childhood educator has been appropriately evaluated through a robust job evaluation process comparing the scope, breadth and depth of responsibilities of the role with comparators. It is appropriate and necessary to look to post-secondary institutions and municipalities that directly operate licensed child care and replicate their compensation packages, including benefits and pensions.

Factors that inspire early childhood educators to remain in the sector, such as programming time, professional learning, etc., are also necessary, alongside appropriate compensation, but not instead of. Other current or proposed solutions to address our labour crisis without addressing compensation are destined to fail.

There are already numerous examples of programs that are not at their allowable license capacity due to the lack of available employees, and the problem is expected to get worse. As we look to expand access to early learning, we know that finding qualified employees will be our biggest barrier. However, being optimistic and expecting that compensation issues will be addressed, we know that the expansion of our services will be necessary, because our current waiting lists are already very long.

I urge the government to strengthen its expectations that all federal investment should be focused on expansion in the not-for-profit sector. Public funding must be viewed as an investment to create long-term sustainable community assets. A federal lending program—either directly or through a third party—that not only offers financing at reasonable lending rates but also supports not-for-profits through the complicated construction or leasehold negotiation process is also necessary.

Not-for-profits can and will expand. They can be and are responsive to their communities, and they often work with other community agencies, such as services for seniors or housing, to the greater benefit of neighbourhoods.

Now I'll move to the modernization of licensed home child care.

Currently in Ontario, there are two options for home child care: licensed and unlicensed. Both include the individual provider being self-employed, but only licensed care includes oversight, monitoring and CWELCC eligibility so that parent fees are affordable.

With its flexibility of hours, including evenings and weekends, licensed home child care must be a component of a national system and may be the most viable option in smaller communities.

The licensed agency model is key to supporting quality. The federal government should separately and in great detail review compensation options that agencies can offer to these small business owners, including how to access benefits and while ensuring that providers are able to retain their self-employed status.

If we do not embrace licensed home child care, the agency model and self-employed providers, we will be perpetuating a two-tiered system in which families who can choose centre-based care because the operating hours fit with their schedules will have access to affordable child care, while those who need the flexible hours offered by home child care won’t.

It's likely that jobseekers will make choices based on affordable access to child care, meaning that we may unintentionally exacerbate a workforce crisis in some sectors due to the lack of child care access.

The Canada-wide early learning and child care plan is, overall, a welcome direction for our country and for all Canadians. It makes sense that it will take conversations with all of us—including those directly delivering services—to get this right. Bill C-35 is a positive direction. Let's make sure it has the teeth needed so that all expectations can be met.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Hiscott.

We'll now have Ms. Flaherty for five minutes, please.

[Marni Flaherty, Acting Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Child Care Federation]

Thank you.

I speak to you today as the interim CEO of the Canadian Child Care Federation, an organization representing child care affiliates and members from across Canada. It is Canada's largest national non-profit charitable organization supporting child care in research and policy.

Since 1983 we have been giving voice to the knowledge, practice and passion of early learning professionals and practitioners across Canada.

I know my time before the committee today is limited. The federation has submitted a detailed written submission on recommendations for your committee's study on Bill C-35, an act respecting early learning and child care in Canada. Today I would like to focus on a key point.

The current child care landscape in Canada is a mix of private, public and not-for-profit operators. The government has made it clear that all new growth in child care should be primarily in the not-for-profit and public sector. The federation strongly endorses publicly managed child care.

All regulated child care services must be organized, funded and delivered in a way that puts the best interests of children and families first. This should be the core requirement for all services that receive public funding. Child care is a public good that brings significant benefits to all of society in much the same way that our more developed public education and public health systems do.

We are in the early days of this rollout. This is a huge transformational change in that it will take time to collect data, build a system, and ensure recruitment and retention strategies for early childhood educators. Our ECEs are the backbone of this system.

The federation welcomes a transformational change. Why? It is because today early childhood education in Canada is an uneven patchwork. It is unavailable in many communities; wait-lists are long; the quality of programs is uneven; and for many parents, quality licensed child care remains unaffordable and not accessible.

We would further recommend that within Bill C-35, funding be explicitly described as annualized and tied to the licensed, regulated system of child care, which includes centre-based and home child care. We applaud the government for their commitment to a national plan. Let me be clear: The federation believes in and supports Bill C-35.

We recommend that there be deeper consideration and directions in two areas—workforce development and quality for children.

Let me speak to workforce, our ECEs.

The success of the new plan is possible only with a well-trained, valued and compensated early childhood educator workforce. This includes educators working in centre-based and licensed home child care, a critical and often poorly understood part of the child care system. We would like to see strong language in the bill that promotes sustained investment in a national strategy for the recruitment, education and retention of the early childhood educators workforce.

We need to establish national standards for competitive wages and national education and credentialing standards for ECEs. We also need foreign credential recognition that supports high-quality programs and accelerates the entry of newcomers who are trusted and able to work in Canada.

I would like to highlight three more very important points.

One, the federation believes in the critical importance of language in the proposed act to ensure accountability through the annual federal public report on progress.

Two, the federation would like the act to clearly stipulate that there be Canadian-based early learning and child care research across a range of disciplines and methodologies. We need research into many areas, including early learning and child care for immigrant children, for children with special needs, for children from official minority language communities and for indigenous children.

Three, we support the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care and enshrining this advisory body into law.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about Bill C-35. The Canadian Child Care Federation fully supports this critical piece of legislation. We believe in the goal of the federal government to provide a Canada-wide quality and affordable early learning and child care system. The federation and all the early childhood professionals and practitioners we speak for look forward to continuing to do the work together with our government partners to realize the transformative system for children and families.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Flaherty.

We'll go to Ms. Moser for five minutes.

[Maggie Moser, Director, Board of Directors, Ontario Association of Independent Childcare Centres]

Thank you for inviting me to speak today.

My name is Maggie Moser. I'm a member of the board of the Ontario Association of Independent Childcare Centres, which represents the small business owners—mainly women—of for-profit, licensed child care centres. These centres are not home child care centres, but rather larger facilities that comprise about 30% of all licensed child care spots in Ontario.

The CWELCC program has not delivered good value for taxpayers and does not meet Canadian standards of equity. The implementation provides undue benefits to higher-income families, who are sailing their yachts on the tides of the program, while those who need it most are left drowning.

Lower-income families were excluded from obtaining access to the CWELCC child care spots. Families who could already afford the fees of their centre were the ones who benefited from the rebates and discounts, while the rest were left behind on a long wait-list.

The program created a systemic barrier to lower-income families and thus also to racialized groups. Public funding is not being used for the stated purpose, which was a solution for the “she-cession” to make it possible for women to return to work and boost our economy. The original intent is not being carried out.

Based on wait-lists, it could take two to three years at least to achieve what should have been the main objective, which is to provide lower-cost child care to those who most need it and thus facilitate a return to work for these women. The program adds many costly layers of administration, which diverts funds that should be reaching families. The complexity and costs of flowing money through complicated cost-based formulas to centres, which then fund parents through discounted fees, adds even more administration, which wastes valuable resources.

Our members, who are mainly female small business owners, have been asked to provide their centres' facilities for the use of the CWELCC system without a recognition of the investments and sweat equity they have made at a time when the government was not creating the child care needed. Many of these centres have never received any government funding and have invested their life savings into their child care centres while being lumped into a category together with large corporate chains. We ask that they be treated fairly and with respect for their historic contribution.

Licensed child care centres across Canada—profit and non-profit—have been facing hardship under the CWELCC program, and many are being taken over by large corporate chains. Centres going out of business are not being purchased by the public sector. This does not benefit families, does not strengthen the system, does not increase the stated goal of maintaining mainly non-profit care and does not further the goal of raising the quality of child care in Canada.

We need a national program that overcomes these biased, discriminatory and fiscally irresponsible factors. We respectfully ask that funding of this program be reallocated as follows.

Increase the funding and expand the income range to the existing subsidy system to increase the number of lower-income and middle-income families who receive full or partial subsidy.

Adequately fund the building of new centres to create downward pressure on fees and enable more women to go back to work.

Increase the amount that can be deducted from income taxes so that parents can deduct the full costs of the child care they pay.

Recognize that for a woman to go back to work, child care fees are the cost of doing business in enabling them to go back into the workforce.

Recognize the extreme pressure on staffing, created mostly from inflation and the pressure created through the increased demand now for high-quality early childhood educators. The amounts allocated for specific staff wage increases are inadequate and insulting to the staff who kept our economy going throughout COVID. We see the resulting great shortages of staff, both ECEs and assistants, across the child care sector. We certainly support a workforce strategy to raise salaries.

Please recognize the contribution of independent small businesses in providing licensed child care at a time when child care was desperately needed over the years, and ensure that funding is structured to support for-profit small businesses.

Thank you for your time. I welcome your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Moser.

We will only have time for one round because I do need a bit of committee business time. I think we can get six minutes in for each person.

We will begin with Madam Ferreri for six minutes.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to everyone today for your testimony on Bill C-35 and child care in Canada.

Ms. Moser, I'll start with you.

Can I ask you about your current wait-lists? How many child care centres do you oversee? How many spaces are there? How many parents are on wait-lists?

[Maggie Moser]

We have 147 spaces as well as 24 half-time spaces, going all the way from infant up to kindergarten. Our centre is 100% full. There is not one empty space in our centre.

At the moment, we have around 600 names on our wait-list. They are for spots in the next year and a half. It is a current list, in that we ask our families to contact us every six months to maintain their registration. If they haven't done that, we take them off the list so that we can maintain a list only of families who are now looking for the next 18 months.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

What we've heard a lot is that we just want to ensure there is access. We've heard from a couple of witnesses that affordability is one piece of the puzzle; it's not everything, but it's really important, I know.

It was a really big decision and it was a huge cost for me. Ten-dollar day care sounds wonderful. It is a wonderful idea, but the execution and the sustainability of it is where we want to really strengthen this piece of legislation.

One of the push-backs is that there seems to be a real divide between not-for-profit, public and private. There seems to be a lot of division on this particular subject.

Can you speak to the women who will be hurt because of the way the current bill is written? There are unintended consequences, as I have said before multiple times. Can you speak to the women entrepreneurs you've seen? Is there an experience you can share with the committee?