Debates of May 4th, 2006

Opposition Motion—Child Care

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of questions for the member and then a comment.

The member made the suggestion that low and middle income families would be excluded from our child care policy and that is absolutely untrue. Low and middle income families will benefit the most from this policy. Thirty per cent of Canadians do not pay income tax and for the member to suggest that it could be done via income tax does not help 30% of Canadians.

The government just took another 655,000 people off the income tax roles. In order for low income families to benefit this is the only fair way to do it.

Earlier this afternoon the leader of her party suggested something that really did not sit well with me at all. He referred to the children of families who choose to look after their own children as abandoned children. Does the member opposite agree that families who choose to raise their own children or find a family member to look after them are committing something that would constitute abandoning children?

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as an accountant I need to make corrections. Her assumptions are totally false.

The Conservative government has increased the tax for middle income Canadians and those people will not be any better off within the Conservative plan. By giving $1,200, Canadians will get $1.20 a day. When it is calculated, they are not getting any benefit.

We are not being bound by ideology. The Conservatives are so stuck on that neo-conservative ideology that they cannot see that there are other solutions. The early learning strategy would have given children the ability to be intellectually available and engaged if a parent had to go to work. The member has no idea how many parents living in the urban area work outside the home. If they have to work, they should have an opportunity to participate in subsidized day care.

The mayor has announced that he is cancelling 6,000 spaces because of the Conservative plan. If the government is so keen on helping children I do not understand why it is so ideologically bound to that neo-conservative ideology.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, earlier today I moved an amendment to deal with the whole notion of non-profit child care. The hon. member understands that big box child care is basically allowing large multinational companies to make a profit on the backs of children. Using government money to make a profit is unconscionable.

Why would the member and her party not accept an amendment saying that the child care spaces being created in new facilities with 2005 and 2006 dollars should be not for profit child care centres?

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, I will not be ideologically bound. I do not believe in ideology. I believe in helping kids and in order to help kids a process has to be regulated.

When the early childhood strategy was adopted by the provinces, they agreed to help those parents who needed to go to work. The program had flexibility and that flexibility would have allowed parents to choose how to improve their parenting skills, how to have a healthy pregnancy, birth, infancy, learning strategies and strengthening the community support.

There is a whole way of looking at it and I am not ideologically bound.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Minister of Human Resources and Social Development]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured today to be splitting my time with the member for Prince Edward—Hastings.

I am very pleased to respond to the motion of the hon. member for St. Paul's. On January 23 of this year, Canadians chose a platform that puts choice in child care as a top priority. We promised, Canadians voted and now we are delivering.

On Tuesday, the Minister of Finance tabled a budget that commits this government to a new vision in child care, a new universal child care plan that provides benefits directly to families and supports the creation of new child care spaces. Both of these components, benefits to families and new child care spaces, work in tandem, and behind both components of the plan lies one unifying vision. That vision is to give flexibility so that parents and communities can create the solutions that work best for them.

With the support of the House, we will create a new universal child care benefit in time to have cheques in the mail to parents this July. The cheques will provide $100 a month for each child under the age of six. This will put $2.5 billion per year directly into the hands of parents. It will provide direct federal support to 1.6 million families and more than 2 million children.

The essence of our vision is that these cheques will give parents flexibility. They will put the universal child care benefit to work where it makes the most sense for them. For some parents it might go toward the cost of formal day care. Other families might use the money to help pay for different kinds of care, with neighbours or family members, for example. Still other families might choose to have a parent stay at home to raise the children. For these parents, as with parents who work outside the home, the benefit provides choice.

Parents may use it to purchase children's books or educational toys. They may use it to purchase educational software or a trip to the local museum. They might even use it to attend a mom and tot program at the local library or community centre. Different families will put the benefit to use in different ways to help their children. That is how it should be.

The day following the budget, for example, the Globe and Mail carried a story about a young single mother in Halifax who has a job as a cashier at Tim Hortons and she earns, as one would expect, a modest income. She has to manage her family finances very carefully. What has she decided to do with the benefit? She is going to invest it in an RESP so that her four year old son will be able to pursue post-secondary education when he is ready for it. This is an investment that she would not have been able to make until now.

This is the kind of choice that individual Canadians make when given the flexibility to put the benefit where it makes the most sense for them. However I want to emphasize that the universal child care benefit is only one of the two components of our universal child care plan. We know that many parents want formal day care. We know also that child care spaces are difficult to find in some communities. We also know that the demand exceeds the current supply. That is why we will be creating new child care spaces.

Tuesday's budget set aside $250 million a year for each of five years beginning next year to support the creation of new, real child care spaces. In fact, we will create up to 250,000 child care spaces each year. Once again, our vision is different. Our vision is to encourage flexibility and innovation. Some parents work shift work. Some must work very long hours at key times of the year. Some have a long commute and cannot make it back to their care centre by the time it closes at five o'clock. Some need to drop their kids off for only a few days a week. There are not very many formal day cares that can accommodate all these variations, so we are creating a child care spaces initiative that will help create spaces that are designed with real life situations in mind, the working realities of parents in communities across Canada.

We want community associations, non-profit organizations and businesses, both large and small, to come up with ideas for child care spaces that make sense for them. We will also include parents as they, believe it or not, are the true experts.

We can see many examples already of innovative ideas in creating child care spaces. In Toronto, for example, a former tin factory on the corner of Spadina and Richmond was converted into a commercial and cultural centre. The developers worked with the Canadian Mothercraft Society to set up an innovative child care centre in the workplace that supports the architects, visual artists, filmmakers, performers and scientists who are tenants of the building. Not only does it offer child care, it also provides a very stimulating environment for children to learn about culture.

These are the kinds of results that we can achieve when people are given the opportunity to innovate, to be flexible and to choose. They are the kinds of results that we will look for when we invite various partners, who have a keen interest in child care issues, to come together to create solutions for their communities.

Over the coming months we will consult with the provinces, territories, employers, non-profit organizations and parents on ways to implement our spaces initiative. We expect to have the results of these consultations late this fall and specific commitments for the initiative will be ready for next year's budget. Very soon we will see the creation of new child care spaces across Canada.

There are two elements of our universal child care plan. They represent a fresh vision of child care, one that encourages flexibility, innovation and, most important, choice. Perhaps most of all our plan is one of our top five priorities. It is not one of 30 or 40 or 50 priorities, which would mean that it is not a priority at all, as we have seen with the previous government at any time. Ours is one of our top five.

Canadian families now have the hope that they will see real action, real child care spaces, real money in their pockets to help with their children and real choice. We will act on our five priorities. We will act on our universal child care plan. Canadians will soon see the benefits of these results. That is why I believe our universal child care plan is such a good one for parents and children right across the country and that is why I urge the hon. members in the House to vote against this motion.

[Ken Boshcoff, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member is aware, in the province of Ontario the social services boards essentially uploaded the cost of child services and child care back to the province. The province took the agreement it had last year and applied it over four years as opposed to creating spaces this year, which, in a three or four year process, will result probably in the downloading of services back to municipalities, thereby adding to the property tax base. That is quite unacceptable.

I have seen several other people from the municipal field who have essentially come to the House in another order of government, so there is a great deal of empathy for them.

The property taxpayers of Ontario will be the big victims of this. How will the government overcome that either this year, next year or in four years, once the money allocated to the provinces has expired?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in many ways our children are our greatest natural resource.

Our program is designed to provide three things: support, choice and spaces. It is not the role of the federal government, constitutionally, to provide 100% child care.

We believe that our role is to provide the parents with the support they need to get the choice that meets their needs, the choice in child care, and we will do that in two ways. One way is through a $1,200 a year universal child care allowance for parents of every child under the age of six. That will help them with affordability to access programming.

As Leslie Wilson, who is the vice-president of the large Canadian day care program, Wee Watch, said the affordability of licensed care has always been a sticking point. For parents currently planning day care for their children, that $1,200 appears to be bridging the gap between the cost of our services compared to unregulated care.

We are talking about spending more than twice as much on our child care program than any previous government has even promised, much less delivered. There is a lot more money going into the system. That money will be there to support the choices parents make. Whether it is formal day care or stay at home, the money will be in the system to make it happen.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on December 5 last year, the Prime Minister had a press conference, and I have the press release right in front of me. The Conservatives announced a new choice in child care allowance. In fact, the press release was very cute. The Prime Minister was holding a cute baby. In the announcement, if we read the fine print, it said very clearly that there would be a rollback of the $250 young child supplement, which means the $1,200 is not real; it is actually $950.

I believe the Conservative Party knows full well about this. It is right in its press release, that it will roll in the current $20.25 per month supplement. That is the young child supplement.

Is it not dishonest to tell Canadians there is a universal $1,200 when the minister knows full well that it is not $1,200, but really $950, because the young child supplement is being rolled back? Should she not come clean on that?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am surprised the hon. member for Trinity—Spadina would be arguing about us giving parents more money. This is something for which she has advocated for a long time, and that is what we are doing.

Historically, parents have not been given money for child care, not one cent. We are offering $1,200. That is the choice the hon. member has and will have when this comes to a vote. She can support $1,200 a year for each child or she can vote against it and vote for giving them nothing. That is the choice: $1,200 a year or nothing.

I hope, for the sake of parents and children across this country, that she chooses $1,200.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Mr. Speaker, today I would like to take the opportunity to speak to my colleagues as a parliamentarian and as their colleague. I would also like to speak perhaps in another general term, and that is as a dad, as a parent. Obviously we have a number of people in the House with that same characterization. I think there perhaps may be a few who would fall into another category similar to myself. I also speak as a grandparent.

I can assure members, after raising a family of three wonderful daughters, professional ladies in their own way now and very established, my wife and I naturally went through the trials and tribulations of raising children. At that time, we had a self-employed business where my wife literally worked dawn to dusk, along with myself, so the needs of child care were very important.

We found a way. We found many different ways. Occasionally it was with a licensed child care centre. Occasionally it was with a parent. Occasionally it was with a family member and/or a friend. The point is, we used a number of versions, depending on the situation at the time that would work for us.

Now I find a similar situation. My three daughters now have children of their own. They are professional ladies, all accomplished in their own life and they are using various different methods of child care, depending on the situation.

Therefore, members will understand that I am a proponent of using what we have available to us as a society. I suppose in an ideal world we would take $30 billion and we would have an automatic, wonderful universal child care system for everyone in the country. That would be wonderful. Let us get a grip on life. Let us get a grip on reality. Let us find the simple situation.

I can understand my colleagues over there cheering wildly and saying, “$30 billion, no problem”. That is very simple. Are we going to pull that amount of money out of our health care system? Are we going to pull it out of our education system? Are we going to pull it out of our social system for the disadvantaged and the needy? Are we going to pull that out of our defence budget? Where are we going to pull the money from?

Let us be real and try to find the proper balance. That is what we have done as a party. That is why I am privileged and proud to be a part of the government where I have an opportunity to express my support for our plan, which is a universal child care plan. It offers choice.

In particular, I would like to focus on our plan and the potential benefits for families living in our nation's smaller communities. I happen to come from a smaller community and so do many members of the House. Choice is definitely the operative and key word in my vocabulary and to many hundreds of thousands of people in the country.

The Conservative child care plan will help Canadian families to act on their own and make their own choice in child care, regardless of the preferred methods of child care, the economic situation or where they might live. Whether it is for a stay at home parent, or a friend or a family member, or a non-profit organization, or a for profit or institutionalized child care program, we believe that parents know best. When it comes to raising their children and preparing them for their future successes, our plan is designed to support the freedom of choice for parents.

I am especially proud of the fact that Canada's universal child care plan will assist families in every community in our country, no matter how small, how large, how remote or how concentrated they are. We are committed to supporting families. I and many Canadians across the country share the feeling that families are the building block of our society. Strong families build strong communities, strong families build healthy communities, and healthy communities are the foundation of this nation's economic and social well-being.

There is absolutely no doubt that the Conservative child care plan will bring benefits that enhance the quality of life for all our citizens. As most of my colleagues are aware, our plan has two parts.

One part is to provide the direct cash infusion of dollars to people who need it, regardless of their situation. There will be $1,200 universally across the board for every child under the age of six.

On the other side, and it is a two barrelled approach, we recognize the value of a form of early childhood learning and education and of having proper institutionalized child care where we can raise standards universally, if possible, to the best of our ability across the country. That is why we have put in another $250 million to create another 25,000 child care spaces per year.

Will it be a challenge? Of course it will be a challenge, but nothing happens unless a decision is made to make it happen. We have made this decision. We have made this commitment. We have budgeted the money. We have a minister and a government committed to following through on it.

It is a lot of work. It is not going to happen if we just sit here and badger back and forth, saying no, they will not, or yes, they will. We are going to do it. A decision is made to do things: that is how a government should work. We will do this.

To my mind, unless the second part of the plan comes through this initiative, we will have secured only half the problem. We will have solved only half the problem. Our goal is to deliver a total package. The total package is dollars and choice, as well as a diversification of choices. I am so proud that our minister, our finance minister and our government have put the money where our mouths were, per se. We said we were going to do it and we are now backing it up with dollars.

Our plan, therefore, reflects the fact that more and more Canadian parents work shifts and weekends. Our plan also takes into account the fact that one-third of Canada's population lives in rural and remote parts of the country.

As members of this House who support rural and remote constituencies know very well, these regions do not have either the resources or the staff to operate child care facilities like those we might see in some of our urban cores. Our plan definitely recognizes and respects these people.

For example, our plan recognizes the particular needs of families who work on farms or in the fishery. For these seasonal workers, how they earn their living is the core of who they are, and it is at the heart of the community's identity. These families, whose work is largely seasonal with times of peak demand, make flexible forms of child care an absolute must. One size fits all just does not work for them. Only this kind of flexibility does. We must have that flexibility, which would achieve the right balance of work and family life.

The universal child care benefit, it should be noted absolutely, is in addition to the $13 billion the Government of Canada already invests in support of families. That includes the Canada child tax benefit, the child disability benefit, the national child benefit supplement, the child care expense deduction, extended parental leave provisions, and the Canada learning bond. Do we throw all of these out, take that money and simply put it into institution based education and child care centres alone? I do not think so. A lot of these programs have provided a tremendous benefit to our society over the years.

We always want the utopian solution, but unless we start to deal with the reality that is in front of us, there is not a prayer that we are going to deliver results for people. Let us be responsible and let us be reasonable in our approach. Let us recognize that we need the diversity. Let us recognize that we need the choice. Let us get on with doing the job.

As well, we believe that employers, both businesses and non-profit organizations, are well placed to create child care spaces in partnership with community organizations and with the help of government incentives. Employers and community organizations all know at first hand the diverse and complex demands on Canadian society today.

Like many of my colleagues, I have visited many early childhood learning and child care centres in my riding that perform their duties in an efficient and rewarding manner. They are to be commended for their contribution. But in the case of rural Canada, parents and community organizations from various small towns and villages try to come together to create their child care spaces in a multi-purpose child care centre. And because parents will be involved in designing this program, it could offer flexibility in hours of care to families from the surrounding areas as they require. Parents must have some kind of involvement.

Where do we draw the line on this? Quite obviously, it comes back to choice. It comes back to a simple recognition that one size does not fit all in this country. The broad diversities of this country are such that one size fits all will not work.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest both to the minister and to the hon. member. I think they forget that six out of ten voters did not vote for their program. In fact, looking at the entire population, seven out of ten who could have voted did not vote for them.

I think we have to recognize that under the EI system we allow parents to take one year off work and be supported by EI during the child's first year of birth. We also have to recognize that we are hearing a philosophy coming forward which seems to say that most Canadians have good family incomes and can make a decision as to whether or not one of them wants to stay home and look after that child during the first five or six years.

We have to recognize the fact that about one child in three is born to a single parent family. A woman quite often has to make a decision about what she has to do. Unless we have adequate, well funded, well organized child care, we do not have a good program for those single parents.

I would ask the hon. member to please reflect on the poor, those people who are trying to support children on their own, that 30% of our population. Would his program work for those poor mothers who are trying to get the economic opportunity to work, to be part of society, to be responsible and to see that their children are well looked after in a well organized, definite day care program?

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is amazing how the member will start to pull out statistics. We can go with statistics of any kind, anywhere. It is the old story: figures lie and liars figure. We have all heard those stories.

As we know, probably half the people in this country do not want some form of official child care, whether they are stay at home parents or parents who have their own arrangements with family or friends. Is that number going to 30%, 50% or 60%? We can play with the semantics of numbers all we want.

To go directly to the member's question, I have an editorial with me from a local paper in my own riding. The timing may be apropos. A journalist went to our local mall and asked people walking down the corridors what they thought of our government program and our approach to child care. He talked to the average person. Are they wealthy? Are they poor? These were just simple everyday individuals who talked to The Intelligencer for its local news:

Providing day care for their two young children just got a whole lot easier, say Tonya and Steven Greaves.

The Trenton couple will have extra money in their household under the new Conservative budget to help pay for day care expenses for three-month-old Deja and three-year-old Dezirae.

“It's great news. I'm glad to see that because day care is so expensive and every little bit helps,” said Tonya, during a break in shopping Tuesday evening at the Quinte Mall.

Steven agreed.

“We'll be able to send both our children to day care. Without a supplement from the government, we would have found it very difficult. So this really is a bonus for us”.

The article continued:

Pat and Heather Ketcheson also welcomed the child-care allowance.

“Day care is so expensive that any little bit helps,” said Heather. “Even with both parents working, it still hurts to pay day care expenses.”

Her husband agreed, saying the child-care allowance “is good news for the employed because it puts more money in their pockets.”

The couple, who lives just east of Belleville, has a three-year-old daughter, Courtney.

Heather operates a day care out of their home. She looks after three other children, besides her own daughter.

“I believe these moms will be happy with the government's budget because they will certainly benefit from it as well,” she said.

I could go on with comments from other people, but they are all similar in nature. These people are so thankful that we have moved a step forward. It is not the total solution, but it is certainly a strong step forward.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this plan is out of touch with Canadians. I am a grandfather. Members have spoken about being grandparents. A number of members have children and grandchildren. I have four children and seven grandchildren, five of whom would meet the criteria of this program.

Their parents would tell us that this plan is so far out of touch with reality that it is just like an episode of Leave It To Beaver. It is that old. Even if the government creates the spaces it is talking about, how does it believe that ordinary hard-working Canadians can possibly afford them?

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Quite honestly, Mr. Speaker, we cannot. There is no one in this country who can afford to pay for complete 100% child care across this country, and neither can the government. That is the point. It is not real. It is not feasible, but rather than say no, there will be none, we try to find the balance between being able to have a government provide some assistance, some form and some guidance and also having people take on parental responsibility themselves and pay as well.

We cannot come up with $20,000 or $30,000 for every child in this country to cover the care that is necessary. If the hon. member thinks that is possible in this budget, then I would suggest that his party will probably never, ever see the governing side in this House, because the NDP will not recognize what it is to run a responsible government.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know how the member can possibly say it is balanced or how it is going to help poor people. The Caledon Institute suggests that it is about 85¢ a day. What type of balance is that? What kind of care can we get for 85¢ per person per day? What kind of choice does that give?

As the former minister said this morning, that would provide not even 40 minutes of day care a day. Is that really a choice? Is that 85¢ really balanced when it costs $8,000 a year for day care?

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I believe the hon. member is referring to the Caledon report. The Caledon report is absolutely flawed and is certainly not cognizant of the real realities.

[Gary Merasty, Liberal, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Mississauga South.

It is a pleasure to speak to the issue before the House today which is one that touches the very heart of this great country and each of its citizens. Health care is an incredibly important concern for me and all my colleagues and, indeed, the future of Canada.

I know that I as a parent have always wanted the best for my children, the best opportunities, the best learning and the best care. I am truly thankful that my wife and I have been able to provide a safe and loving home for them.

However many of our fellow Canadians do not have this. Far too many in a land of such wealth and prosperity have little and must engage in a daily struggle for survival. Their pain far too often does not have a voice, rather, only cold, unfeeling numbers tell the undeniable story of their unspoken tragedy.

Infant mortality is a clinical phrase, one that only suggests the terrible anguish it brings. In 2000, Health Canada reported that the first nations infant mortality rate was 6.4 deaths per 1,000 live births, a rate 16% higher than the general Canadian population. Those who survive are often brought home to live in a house that overcrowded and need of repair. Indian Affairs and Northern Development reported that in 2005 12% who live in a first nations community live in overcrowded conditions in comparison to 1% elsewhere in Canada.

Moreover, 27.6% of these homes are in desperate need of major repairs or need to be replaced outright. Many of these children suffer greatly because of the twin scourges of poverty and disease. The rate of child poverty in Saskatchewan, for instance, is already far too high at 17.6%, but for off reserve first nations and Métis in Saskatchewan, the number shows a truly dire situation. Fully 55.9% of first nations children and 36% of Métis children live in poverty.

I ask members to please not confuse the culture of poverty with the culture of aboriginal people.

Too often poverty also means disease. In 2000, the gap between first nations and Canadian rates of enteric, food and water borne diseases among children aged 0 to 14 were reported by Health Canada to be 2.1 times higher for shigellosis, 6 times higher for rubella and 7 times higher for tuberculosis.

These horrible statistics are linked to other troubling and chilling numbers. Aboriginal youth are eight times more likely to be incarcerated than other Canadian youth. In Saskatchewan, 75% of all youth incarcerated are aboriginal. As a terrible last act, 22% of all deaths of first nations youth were as a result of suicide. We need more than anything to listen to these silent voices for their anguish says the most.

I ask the House to try to fully comprehend the tragedy of these numbers. This is a tragedy with silent voices, voices that all need to be given strength, to be listened to and to be responded to.

The response we need to give is one of compassion, support and help. This support is not a hand-out but a helping hand up. Right now there are little or no supports for aboriginal children aged 0 to 4 in first nations communities, especially children born with disabilities. With no services and few accessible quality early childhood intervention programs try to imagine the anguish that parents and children who want and need but they cannot get. This is what it means to be powerless.

Saskatchewan as a whole needs more spaces in order to meet the needs of dedicated working parents. A University of Toronto report recently found that Saskatchewan does not have nearly enough spaces to meet these families' needs. In fact, only 4.9% of Saskatchewan children under age 12 had access to regulated child care spaces, the lowest in the country.

The Progressive Conservative Party recognized this country's obligation to protect and nurture children. In 1959, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, a Saskatchewan boy, signed the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child. In 1989, Prime Minister Mulroney signed its successor, the Convention on the Rights of the Child. By doing so, they entered into a pact with the world to ensure that all children, including the ones living within their own country, would not be left behind.

The Liberals, however, implemented commitments, 13 years of commitments and results, to ensure no children would be left behind. Head Start is an excellent example of this commitment. This comprehensive early childhood development program for aboriginal children and their families now serves 3,500 children in 114 communities across Canada. The on reserve component provides services to 7,700 children in 265 communities.

The national child benefit also introduced by the Liberals has also helped Canadian families greatly. The national child benefit helps: one, prevent and reduce the depth of child poverty; two, supports parents as they move into the labour market; and three, reduces overlap and duplication of government programs.

For Saskatchewan, the Liberals entered into an agreement with the province to commit $146 million in funding over five years devoted to creating 7,600 funded child care and early learning spaces, spaces that the parent experts asked for.

For first nations on reserve, the Liberals committed $100 million to child care spaces and, on top of that, committed to an additional $100 million for northern aboriginal early learning and child care agreed to at the Kelowna first ministers meeting in November 2005.

As a result of these initiatives, Canada's strong economic performance, which has been aided by eight consecutive balanced budgets, the number of low income families with children has dropped from close to 16% in 1996 to 11% in 2000. These are real achievements. This guaranteed parents and children real support and help.

Unfortunately, the Conservative government is slowly tearing these commitments down. For Saskatchewan, the funding for spaces has been choked off, closing off the opportunity to create more spaces. For aboriginals, the Kelowna accord has been tossed aside.

Instead, the government offers $3.25 a day to parents, taxable in their hands and subject to a myriad of clawbacks and hocus-pocus tax credit plan. There are few guarantees that this money could even get to families who need it most.

First, $3.25 a day will not allow needy parents to quit work when they need to earn at least $6 or $7 an hour to provide for themselves and their children. What is worse, this small amount could actually lead to more problems than it solves: clawbacks on child tax benefits, missed eligibility for GST credits, clawed back social assistance payments and so on. On top of this, these working parents will be taxed. It will be the harshest for parents who are barely at the poverty line.

At the end of day, April 30 being that day, the Caledon Institute reports that families with two working parents with a combined income of $30,000 will only take home $199 a year. The $3.25 plan becomes the 55¢ plan. Meanwhile, families making $200,000 a year with a stay at home parent will take home $1,076 a year.

Low income aboriginal Canadians need support. This $3.25, or rather 55¢, will not help with threats of disease and terrible living conditions. This is an attempt to explain away the problem without dealing with it, without building capacity, creating opportunities for early learning and care, and giving parents the support they need.

The tax credit plan will do even less. It will not create spaces on reserves with their different tax environments or in inner cities and economically marginalized areas. It does not respond to the challenges of remote and rural communities which need real commitments and real funding.

I know the government will consider this old hat but the Conservative plan is inadequate. The government needs a lesson about the differences of equality and equity. Legislating the equality of opportunity and treating everyone the same does not eliminate discrimination. The measure of equality is in the equity of results, not the equity of opportunity.

We must strive to listen to the silent voices and the voices of all Canadians who struggle and need real help and real commitment. I call upon all members to support the opposition motion.

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the new member to the House.

I agree with the member when he says that the housing problem with aboriginal people has deteriorated, that schooling has deteriorated, that suicide rate has deteriorated, that the crime rate has become worse, that water quality problems in our aboriginal communities have deteriorated and that the lives of aboriginal people have been deteriorating and the gap is widening. The Auditor General will confirm that.

To me he has just described a damning indictment against a government that has governed this country for 13 years. From of his own lips, he has said that the lives of aboriginal people have deteriorated and the culture of poverty that exists among aboriginal people has become worse.

Why is the member involved with an organization that has basically failed the aboriginal people over the past 13 years and led to this really dreadful situation that we are seeing today?

[Gary Merasty, Liberal, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I cited some statistics in my speech that talked about how the actions of the Liberal government actually helped. We began to set the stage for making even bigger differences in the lives of aboriginal children.

What we see across the floor today is that Kelowna has been tossed aside, child care has been tossed aside and there is no mention of health care. These kids need the help of the government today.

The Liberal Party is proud of its record when it was in government. The Kelowna accord set the stage for bigger and better things.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, earlier I moved a motion to amend the Liberal motion. The amendment clearly said that we needed to ensure that the money that is still flowing in 2005-06, a total of $1.3 billion, should be accounted for and that taxpayers should see at the end of fiscal year 2006 how that money has been spent.

My amendment was very clear. It asked the House to urge the new government to ensure that all the money would be spent on child care, that the money would be accounted for and a report sent back to the House by the end of fiscal year 2006 on how that money had been spent.

Why did the Liberal Party, the member's team, decide to vote against this very good amendment?

[Gary Merasty, Liberal, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Mr. Speaker, back in the riding that I so proudly represent, we talk about the opportunity that the Kelowna accord presented, that the child care plan presented and that the actions that were talked about with regard to health and economic development presented.

Unfortunately, the people in my riding of Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River realized that it was the NDP that prevented all of that from occurring. That is an unfortunate reality but that is what we have to deal with. Now we have to hope that the government across actually responds and stands up for aboriginal Canadians.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal member for Malpeque produced a report last year that recommended direct financial support to farm families for child care, not a nine to five bureaucratic day care plan. The Conservative child care plan, a universal benefit to all families, includes farm families. It is what this report called for.

I know hon. Liberal members like to say that we are wrong, but is the hon. member saying that his Liberal colleague from Malpeque is wrong?

[Gary Merasty, Liberal, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member for Malpeque is an outstanding individual who has done a great service to the House and to the people he represents.

In rural Saskatchewan, I have met with people with families who say, “The $1,200 is fine, but what do I do with it? Where do I spend it to get the spaces? I need that support”.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in a book I once penned supporting a private member's bill, I tried to define what I would suggest was real love. I defined real love in the book as a situation where one puts the interests of the other ahead of one's own.

We have to presume that parents have real love for their children and that they will put the interests of their children ahead of their own interests. In some cases that may mean for a family that a parent will give up on that paycheque and stay at home because the parent wants to be with that child and the parent will decide when that child is ready to go into some third party care arrangement.

It may also be that the parent has to get the child into a third party day care arrangement because the parent is not a good parent. The parent does not have a good home for the child to be stimulated properly. The parent could be distracted totally with everything else in his or her life and maybe real love would be demonstrated by putting the child into child care immediately.

Those are the extremes and we have everything else in between, so it is a truism that one solution will not fit all.

We have heard a lot today from the members who have participated in the debate about the mechanics, about the $1,200, that it is universal, and why will the government not be transparent and say it is not really $1,200 because concurrently with introducing this, the government is also proposing to eliminate the young child supplement under the Canada child tax benefit. That is $249, so all of a sudden $1,200 a year is less than that for those who qualify for that benefit. On top of that, it is taxable, in the hands admittedly of the lower income earning spouse of the family, if there are two parents in the household.

The Caledon Institute basically found that the lowest income Canadians would get the least benefit because the tax shelter of their personal exemption, which they would transfer to the earning spouse, would be reduced by the amount of $1,200 and they would lose the young child supplement. They would also get a lower GST credit.

Cumulatively, it sounds peculiar that low income earners would lose more than the high income earners, but when we think of somebody making $200,000 getting the $1,200 for a non-working spouse, all it does is marginally reduce the transfer of the personal exemption by $600 and the tax on that is about $150. In fact, someone making $200,000 with no income for the other spouse will actually get $1,100, according to the Caledon Institute. I have checked the numbers.

This should not be about numbers. Every government has choices to make. This was a political strategy simply to attract votes and the Conservative Party made that choice.

The other aspect was the tax credit that will be offered to businesses, some $10,000 a year. In the first year we are talking about $250 million to create 25,000 spaces. There are some problems because non-profit organizations cannot use a tax credit. How do we have a not for profit child care arrangement that will also benefit and create spaces? The $1,200 per year for each child under six will not create a child care space. The spaces the government is referring to are coming as a consequence of the tax credit, so there are people who have been left out.

On top of that, if companies take up the option of having the tax credit of $10,000, they may say that they will incorporate it into their current buildings. Maybe they have a few spare rooms and they can do a little something with them, paint them and put up a few pictures, maybe make some places for the kids to sit and play. This is not early learning child care. It is not regulated child care.

In fact, there are no provisos at all for there to be any rules or regulations guiding this operation. What it really means is that it is babysitting. It is absolutely going to be babysitting. We should be concerned about that as legislators.

Members will recall that the OECD, in doing a major study of day care around the world commented on Canada's situation, with some exclusions relative to the Quebec situation. Canada's day care facilities as they exist were characterized as glorified babysitting.

I believe it was the parliamentary secretary who said that he had never been to a day care, that they did not have to consult with them about what they wanted, that it did not matter. When we consider the needs of children, we also have to consider how this fits into the whole scheme of things. I must admit this unregulated situation is not dealing with the fact that today's child care, as the OECD says, is glorified babysitting and is not even early learning and development. Kids are not in stimulative care.

Many years ago there was a study called the Perry Preschool Project. They went into a black ghetto in the United States, an area where the outcome of those children was terrible under any criteria. They picked some kids and put them in a group. High powered, well trained child psychologists and behaviouralists worked with them for years. They followed these kids through their development and found that lo and behold, the kids performed much better than the kids from the ghetto who were not in the program. Well, duh, go figure.

That is where the statement about a $7 benefit for every $1 investment came from. We have to take the most bizarre and extreme case in the worst case and compare it to what can be done when dealing with a totally losing situation.

These arguments can be used to spin this early childhood learning any way we want it, so I do not want to play that game.

I do want to make reference to Dr. Fraser Mustard. The first week I was on Parliament Hill I had an opportunity to sit down and talk with Dr. Mustard. He has been before various parliamentary committees and has talked to many members of Parliament about the importance of the wiring of the brain.

Bonding with a child begins before birth. The fetus hears the mother's heartbeat, the words, the sounds of the family members. It hears the singing and all of the movements and the patterning. What we are doing in fact is patterning the brain. There are these things called synapses. As the stimulation and input to the child happens, the brain begins to get wired in response to these inputs. That continues on during the first year of life, which is the most accelerated period. Dr. Mustard calls the period up to age one as dynamite. That is where it happens in terms of wiring the brain.

My interest would not be so much where I could find an early childhood learning program. All I know is that the experts have said that a secure, consistent attachment to an engaged, committed adult is the best scenario for a newborn child. It has that consistency of involvement with someone. A mother could do it, but another person could also do it. It does not say parent. It says an adult, someone who can provide that consistency.

There is a lot of information about raising children. Parents do have to make choices. The $1,200 puts money into pockets but there is going to be a price to pay when those people file their income tax returns, because it is a taxable benefit and because lower income Canadians are going to have a loss of other benefits and will have to pay tax on it. For instance, someone making $40,000 a year will be faced with a tax bill of about $700 when filing a tax return. The example was given that a person will spend the $1,200 by investing in an RESP. I hope that the person does not invest the pre-tax amount because a lot of that money is going to have to go back to the government simply because it is taxable.

This is an issue of transparency of all the facts, of all the details. Without transparency there is no accountability. The proposals that the government has made in fact do not meet the test of transparency or accountability.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Before I proceed to questions and comments, it is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the question to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment is as follows: the hon. member for Nanaimo--Cowichan, Aboriginal affairs.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Cambridge.