Mr. Speaker, I stand again in the House to talk about the deep need for Canadian women and families to have access to affordable, universal child care in our country. Something most other OECD countries have, Canada still does not.
This is the argument. Families need universal, affordable, accessible, publicly-funded child care to get women into the workforce. Universal child care would create jobs and the fiscal surplus generated would mean no net cost to taxpayers. Child care workers need better wages to ensure their own economic security and also to encourage their retention in the field.
Again and again, we hear the cost to families of unaffordable child care. Women tend to earn less than their male counterparts because there is no pay equity legislation in Canada. The government has still not legislated it.
When there is a lack of access to affordable child care, it tends to be the woman who drops out of the workforce to look after kids. When she returns to the workforce, she tends to only have available to her part-time, precarious work. Women throughout the world, and in Canada as well, have an unfair share of unpaid labour.
Not having access to unemployment insurance, or pension contributions or benefits because they are working part-time, means that many women end up behind, financially, and the lack of affordable child care is at the root of it. My sister and her husband had to leave Toronto because their child care costs were more than their rent. This is not sustainable for young families and it is not a good investment.
Last month, the OECD was in Ottawa investigating Canada's commitment to its feminist agenda and its gender lens on policies and programs. The OECD had observed previously about Canada that affordability and quality in child care overall was still an issue “forcing many women to drop out of the labour market or reduce their working hours during childrearing years. This affects women’s earnings levels: full-time employed women in Canada earn on average 19% less than men.”
On Friday, I was at a launch of the State of the Child report, which is done every couple of years in Nanaimo. It was the greater Nanaimo early years partnership, and I really applaud its work. It hosted all government agencies at all levels of government. The report found that children in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith were living in poverty. The children were between the ages of zero and five. This has increased to 24% of the population. It is a terrible number and reflects a lack of access to government services and employment support in our community.
There is good news on the horizon. The IMF said that the Liberals could afford to spend $8 billion a year on child care and the program would pay for itself. Why did the Liberals' 2016-17 budget not allocate money for new child care spaces? Increasing the Canada tax child benefit does not help if there are no places to spend that money.