Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Sault Ste. Marie.
Last week in Trinity--Spadina, I was at a wonderful event with many happy children and parents. It was the unveiling of Kensington Kids, a wonderful, new, community based, not for profit child care and early learning centre. Parents and children across Canada need affordable, accessible, quality centres like Kensington Kids. When the children entered the centre, I watched as they immediately started to laugh and play. Both the kids and the parents had beautiful smiles on their faces.
These parents have been waiting for child care for a long time. Kensington Kids child care centre is their choice. In fact, those parents helped create this child care centre. Because it is community based and is set in a public school, it is the parents who are on the board of directors. One of the parents, Lynne Woolcott, is the chairperson.
It is parents who want the best for their kids. These parents created the kind of child care centre they want for their children. It is their choice. They dreamed about this centre for a long time. It is based in a community school. The kindergarten teacher, Sandy Banting, explained to us the importance of early learning and child care. She said that kids who go to this centre enter kindergarten ready to learn and have a much better academic performance in grades 1 and 2 as a result.
A really cute little boy named Ryan asked me to give a message to the Prime Minister of Canada and to this House of Commons. He said he wants his little brother to be able to join him next year. That was his dream. I said “was”, but that is his dream and maybe that dream will not be fulfilled.
Parents and kids in my riding as well as those all around Toronto and right across Canada have been disappointed time and time again when we have tried to create new child care spaces. We have had 12 years of empty promises from the Liberals since the first time they promised a national child care program back in 1993. Finally last year, with the minority government, we saw some action and some federal funding. With that action, Toronto was able to give the green light to Kensington Kids, with the best start funding, to create badly needed new child care spaces.
Unfortunately, the child care agreements were not enshrined in legislation by the Liberals, so Kensington Kids did not secure multi-year funding. That means it will have no funding after this year. These happy, smiling children may be booted out by this government. They may be out in the cold. These children cannot wait another 12 years. They deserve better and so do their parents. Their dreams and their parents' choices have been crushed by this callous budget.
These parents and kids and early learning and child care experts face the real impact of the government's bogus $1,200 choice in child care scheme. As we have shown time and time again, this scheme provides no choice and no child care. It does not even provide the full $1,200. The government has dropped some of the clawbacks, but it has failed to protect the allowance in the child tax benefit, so it is still taxable.
As well, the government plans to take away the young child benefit. This young child supplement is $250. The government is reducing this allowance for the working families that need it most. This government is delivering more to the stay at home spouses of wealthy Canadians, not the working families who need child care, and certainly not to the kids. It is certainly not delivering to Kensington Kids. They had no reason to smile yesterday and they have no reason to smile today.
It is the same old story. This is another government that gives with one hand and takes with the other. With this budget, most working families will see only a couple of dollars a day at best. That is barely enough for diapers, let alone child care. It certainly is not enough to fund a quality centre like Kensington Kids.
This scheme is a cruel joke. Maybe we can call it a choice of diapers plan because at least diapers are available in shops but child care spaces are not. Thousands of kids are on waiting lists. This country can do better. We have waited too long and have had too many disappointments, and closing down a new and badly needed child care centre would be the cruelest joke of all.
For the sake of children, for Kensington kids and the parents, families and communities in my riding and all across Canada, New Democrats have been working on a three point plan: multi-year funding to create and sustain new child care spaces; the full $1,200 to families through the child tax benefit so it is not taxed back; and entrenching quality, accessible, affordable, not for profit child care in legislation, with the option, of course, for Quebec to opt out.
The Liberal opposition motion that we are debating today is well-meaning but it is vague and flawed. It is designed to let the government off the hook. It has a lot of bluster but not enough teeth. The Liberals may be distracted by the leadership race, I do not know. They seem to be more interested in blaming the NDP. They cannot get over the fact that it is Canadians who are tired of empty promises and corrupt government.
The motion today opens the door for the funding of corporate, big box child care rather than the public, not for profit, community based child care programs. The NDP would support a motion that specified not for profit child care. No taxpayer money should go to big box profiteers. We would also support a motion that required government accountability on child care.
Therefore, I would move, seconded by the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie, that the motion be amended by inserting “not for profit” before the word “facilities” in the last part of the motion and adding to the last part of the motion a new section, which would read as follows, “That the House urge the government to ensure that funds designated for early learning and child care are spent to deliver high quality, universally accessible, affordable and not for profit child care spaces, and that this House ask the government to report to Parliament in order to provide for transparency and accountability on how funds designated for child care have been spent by the end of the 2006 fiscal year”.
I urge all members of the House to do the best we can for the children of this country. We have the power to make children smile. Let us use that power wisely.