Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to follow up a question that I asked back before Christmas. The occasion was the third anniversary of the cancelling of the child care agreements, which had been signed by the member for York Centre and the provinces and territories around the country. Because the three year funding had been phased out, the city of Toronto announced that 6,000 spaces would be gone as a result of that cancellation.
The point is that Canada is failing on child care. It is failing its citizenry and it is particularly failing its children. In a report released in December, Canada ranked last out of 25 OECD nations on 10 key benchmarks. Those benchmarks were further to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Canada is failing on the benchmarks of early learning and child care.
In 2004-05 we had a brief hope when the Liberal government, under Paul Martin, brought in these chid care agreements and the member for York Centre signed them. That was dashed when the Conservative government came forward in 2006. It cancelled those agreements and replaced them with the universal child care benefit of $100 a month. Everybody can use $100 a month. There is no question about that.
However, I want to refer to a book that I picked up last week called Beyond Child's Play, when I met with some child care advocates in Vancouver on Friday.
Speaking to the universal child care benefit, in a wonderful article by Jody Dallaire and Lynell Anderson, they said:
While families need adequate incomes, they also need services to be available and affordable in their communities. The UCCB does not build or sustain child care services.
That is very true. Nobody would argue that many families need $100 a month, but it is a fallacy and a fraud to suggest that this is child care. It is not. We need a system in our country. Maybe some people would say that it is too expensive to have a system in Canada. I would like to quote from the same article again. It says:
Some say that, in uncertain times, Canada cannot afford to invest in child care. We say, nothing could be further from the truth. Child care services are an essential part of every community's economic and social infrastructure—an economic stimulus with long-term benefits for Canada.
There is no question among people who know what is happening in child care in our country that we need to have a system. We need to build a system. There are countries in the OECD that have a system. In Canada people like Monica Lysack, Jody Dallaire, Martha Friendly and many others understand this and are trying to get this message across.
What kind of an outcry would there be in any community if an eight-year-old boy or girl was refused entry into elementary school? It would be on the front page of the local paper. However, every day in every community in Canada, children cannot get early learning and child care. Why does Canada have very high rates of illiteracy for a country as wealthy as it is? We are not maximizing the human potential of all children. We need to do that.
I would like to close with another quotation from an article by Martha Friendly. She said:
While many would say that a recession is not the time to be putting forward demands for a new social program, others would follow Barack Obama's lead to argue that the choice between “getting our economy moving now and rebuilding it over the long term” is a false choice—that leaders need to be able to walk and chew gum by ensuring that the demonstrated potential for early childhood education and care to contribute to a prosperous Canada is realized.
The government does not realize it, but the time will come when a more enlightened government comes into this place and makes early learning and child care a reality for Canadian families.