Thank you very much, Madam Chair and members of the committee.
You heard two excellent presentations earlier this morning detailing the positive impact of affordable child care on women's economic security. They made the case that women's economic security is enhanced by participation in the paid labour force and that levels of female participation increase when mothers have access to child care. I will focus on three things the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada thinks should happen now to make that access a reality. Our viewpoint has been developed through extensive consultation with parents, early childhood educators, policy experts, researchers, and others involved in child care. We hope that you will include it in your report.
First, please push to get the federal-provincial-territorial child care policy framework right. Building a child care system in Canada will take at least a decade. It's critical that the federal government commit for the long haul and put in place foundational building blocks that will stand the test of time. We want to see the federal government keep working with the provincial and territorial governments to develop a sound, extensive policy approach to early childhood education and child care as a fully funded, high quality inclusive public service that all Canadians can access regardless of their economic circumstances, their place of residence, or the individual needs of their children.
Currently, parents in Canada are forced to purchase services from a child care market. Some of that market is regulated and some is not. Some of it is not for profit; some of it is for profit. It's a market that offers a confusing array of scarce offerings, too many of which are of poor quality, and almost all of which are unaffordable for families. This child care market is particularly bad at meeting the needs of children with disabilities, children whose parents work non-standard hours or irregular hours, and children who live in rural and remote communities.
Leaving the provision of care to the market doesn't work for child care any better than it would for health care, for primary education, for secondary education, for sanitation, or for countless other areas in which governments have intervened for the benefit of all Canadians in order to enhance equality of opportunity and provide a higher standard of living for all and just because doing it that way makes economic sense.
We need both levels of government to work together. While the provinces and territories have constitutional jurisdiction over the delivery of child care services, the federal government has the spending power to drive the change. The federal government also has a legal obligation to make changes to child care, because the current system makes it impossible for Canada to live up to its international commitments with respect to women's equality and the rights of the child. Unfortunately, we will not likely get the federal-provincial-territorial policy framework that we need when the federal government's multilateral framework agreement is announced, which we expect to be within weeks of the federal budget.
We don't know a lot about the negotiations that have been under way now off and on for more than a year, because, honestly, they've been carried out in secret with no meaningful input from stakeholders. But everything points to the promised agreement being little more than a broad commitment to make child care more affordable and accessible and of better quality and also, more flexible. Instead of principles, we need a framework that says how those objectives will be achieved. For example, we need to have an agreement for direct public funding of child care services rather than indirect funding through fee subsidies to parents. I read a report the other day—I think it was produced by Wellington County in Ontario—that said the child care system in Canada is funded 88% by user fees and only 12% through direct government support of services. That's no way to finance a system so critical to women's economic security. Giving a very small number of parents help with their user fees through subsidies is just not good enough.
We need a policy framework that sets out direction for solving the problems that plague the child care workforce. Quality of child care is directly linked to the qualifications and the stability of the workforce. Expanding the system is just not possible without more trained early childhood educators, but attracting and retaining staff to the ECE profession is not possible when the predominantly female child care workforce works for substandard wages and in impossibly difficult conditions.
The policy framework has to include commitments to putting in place the infrastructure required for system-building, including the regular collection and the analysis of data.
We have put a proposal for the kind of policy framework we are looking for in a three-page document, and I've brought it with me. I gave it to the clerk to pass to you, along with our vision of the kind of system we need to build.
The second thing we urge you to do is support our view that early childhood education and child care needs of indigenous communities have to be addressed through a separate and distinct policy framework, one developed by both levels of government and representatives of Canada's indigenous peoples. Truth and reconciliation demands no less, and the law requires that indigenous children services receive funding equal to that provided for non-indigenous children.
Third, we call for sustained and proper levels of federal funding. When the budget is introduced tomorrow, we'll know how much if anything the federal government proposes to budget for child care beyond the one-time-only $500 million that was in the 2016 budget. We expect, however, to see a flat rate allocation of $500 million for each of the next 10 years, taken from the social infrastructure fund.
If this does occur, Canadians won't see more or improved child care services unless the federal government bumps up its financial support for future years. We need a separate stream of funding for child care also, so that we're not in competition for dollars with other priorities, such as housing.
The first year of funding already announced for 2017-18 is not as high as we would like, but it could help with some immediate problems in child care, such as the long wait-lists in many jurisdictions for parent fee subsidies, or the lack of spaces in remote and rural communities.
After 2018, however, we need to dramatically increase the funding commitment each year, until we reach the target of 1% of GDP being allocated for early childhood education. This may seem like a lot, but as Professor Fortin and others have already testified, the spending will generate significant returns in economic growth, including boosting women's participation in the workforce. The cost of the program will pay for itself through increased tax revenues and productivity. It's spending that will make women more equal, and most importantly, it will ensure the best care for our country's children.
Like the others, I want to move to a personal note. It's absolutely impossible for women to make a presentation to the status of women committee without speaking about our own experience, because of course the personal is political.
I want to tell you that I came to child care advocacy not as a policy expert; I really came as a parent, as a single mother of two children. I became interested in advocacy and in the issue of child care when I became pregnant with my first child and was told that I'd better get my name on the waiting list or I would never have access to child care. Then I did, luckily enough, get a space for my son in a good, high-quality child care, and I had to pay for the fees in the form of a debt for the following 10 years, because it was that much money, and then of course I had a second child and had to pay the fees for two children.
My son is now 32; my daughter is 26. I became a grandmother exactly three weeks ago today. It just breaks my heart that my son and his partner are going to have even a harder time than I had more than 30 years ago. I can't believe that in Canada, as wealthy as we are, with all the expert advice that we have, we know what to do and still haven't done it. It really is a question of political will, and your committee can play a huge role in making sure that this point is made and that we get the politics right and the finances right.
Thank you.