Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Peterborough.
In a sense my remarks directly relate to what was just said.
My speech will deal mainly with early childhood, and the challenge of finding the means to work along with the provinces. I believe we can make considerable progress together.
How can we as governments, federal, provincial and territorial, work together with communities to support children and their families, particularly very young children, so that the development of those children can be as good as we can collectively make it? That is my subject.
The reason I have chosen that subject, in the context of the Speech from the Throne, is something which the Prime Minister said in his response to the Speech from the Throne. He said “Together with the provinces we have begun to put in place the national children's agenda to improve supports for families and children. I believe this work has to be accelerated. So do provincial premiers. We must move as quickly as possible from talk to action. Today I challenge all governments to have in place by December 2000 a federal-provincial agreement consistent with the social union framework to strengthen supports for early childhood development, an agreement on principles and objectives on measuring outcomes and reporting to Canadians and an agreement on a five year timetable for increased federal and provincial funding to achieve our shared objectives”.
The challenge is how we can do such a deal. How can we work with the other governments in the country to do the right deal and not just any deal for children? How can we do it in about 14 months? How can we do it by December 2000?
I think the only way we can conceive of a deal is to think of it as sort of a national project for all of our children.
We have a number of elements of success in place already. The first is perhaps the whole question of knowledge. What do we know about optimum developmental paths for all children, particularly those in the zero to six population? As the finance minister said yesterday in his annual economic update, quoting Dr. Fraser Mustard, “There is powerful new evidence from neuroscience that the early years of development, from conception to age six, particularly for the first three years, set the base for competence and coping skills that will affect learning, behaviour and health throughout life”.
The science also tells us that an additional factor for success is what we do at the community level. It is not simply a question of socioeconomic status, it is what happens at the level where we all live and breath, the level of the neighbourhood. Social cohesion is a positive factor which goes beyond income in explaining why some kids do better than others. There was a recent article in the Globe and Mail on Port Colborne, Ontario which talked about “wovenness” as being the magic, the secret which takes us beyond income into good results for kids.
The first asset that we can bring to the table is the knowledge base which is growing exponentially in this area. The second is that the provinces are increasingly on side. It was extraordinary to hear the recent Speech from the Throne from Ontario in which the lieutenant governor said these words on behalf of her government:
Your government believes that, to realize their full potential, children must get off to the best possible start in life. The most important period of development is the three years immediately following birth. That is why it is so important to nurture and support children's development from the moment they are born.
Building on the pioneering work of world renowned expert Dr. Fraser Mustard and child advocate the Hon. Margaret McCain, the government is committed to a bold new initiative that ultimately will extend early development opportunities to every child and parent in Ontario. Recently announced demonstration projects are merely the beginning. Your government is determined to remain the national leader in early child development.
That is the Government of Ontario. It is surprising perhaps to some, considering its other social policies, but that is a great one.
We know that in British Columbia the Hon. Moe Sihota recently announced a major new initiative in the area of child care and invited federal participation once again.
We are very familiar with the case of Quebec, which made a societal promise to its children, particularly its very young ones, with its $5-a-day child care centres. They are a kind of gold standard for the rest of the country. They are the summit we are all striving to reach, to use the vocabulary of social union.
We can find allies among the provinces across the country. In a meeting held in Kananaskis with the social services ministers as recently as October 26, ministers said the following:
Ministers also reviewed joint work currently under way in both social services and health sectors on early childhood development, including possible areas where governments can work together. Ministers agreed that this work should form the basis for responding to the federal government's invitation in the Speech from the Throne to work together in this area. They committed to working with federal, provincial, and territorial ministers of health to move forward as quickly as possible on early childhood development.
The next day their counterparts, the ministers who constitute the provincial-territorial council on social policy renewal, made the same point:
Ministers stressed the urgent need for action on children's issues, building on the leadership taken by provinces and territories and the co-operative work with the federal government. Ministers emphasized the need to move forward on the national children's agenda.
Now seems to be the time for us all to go forward, as we have the provinces enthusiastically responding to the Speech from the Throne.
Of all the assets we can bring to the table, including our own efforts, the knowledge base and the provinces, the greatest assets surely are the communities themselves. Communities are where we live and breathe. Communities are where our children develop through schools, through play contacts, through all of the things which make life worth living in our private lives.
I find this the most exciting part. This morning I was at a breakfast meeting in Ottawa-Carleton with the Success by Six group, an extraordinary alliance spearheaded by the Ottawa-Carleton Board of Education and the United Way, bringing together 85 different entities, agencies, the voluntary sector and government departments, to work together to improve outcomes for the zero to six population. The spirit of enterprise and excitement in the room of working together to produce a kind of seamless web of services so that all children and their parents will be given optimum support was tremendous. It was heartening. We have in the nation's capital a demonstration project, one chosen by the Ontario government as well.
Last week I was in Toronto with a similar group, called the Early Years Action Group, from North York. It is happening across the country. In Vancouver we can find Opportunities for Youth. In Montreal we have Un Deux Trois Go. In other words, we have a huge resource base.
We have allies like the United Way of Canada, which we are aware of this month as its flags are fluttering across Canada to remind us of the annual campaign. This network covers 87% of Canada. There is a huge sector of civil society that wants to participate in the national children's agenda.
What do we need to do? We need a deal which is something like the Canada Health Act. The Prime Minister talks of objectives and principles. We also need a deal which deals with outcomes. The Prime Minister talks of outcomes and accountability in public reporting. We need a deal which has money. The money has to come in the form of an early childhood development services fund, with resources coming from the provinces and the federal government, accessed by communities after they have determined what they need to do the right job for kids from birth to six, so that those children will be ready to learn and ready for life by the time they enter the school system.
That is what we need to do. It means that we have to sign on a group of provinces. It means that we have to see working examples in the next 12 months of how communities can work together, such as they are doing in Ottawa-Carleton and in Ontario in general.
We need a plan which focuses on all children and, as Minister Marland of Ontario said the other day, a plan which is affordable, available and accessible to all children.
We have a huge task to complete this part of the promise of the Speech from the Throne. It will involve all of us in all of our communities doing our best to work with the provincial governments, the federal government, communities and the voluntary sector to make this dream of a national project of making all of Canada's children as ready to learn as they possibly can be by the time they enter school a reality.