Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak about Bill C-35, the Canada Early Learning and Child Care Act.
Let me take this opportunity to first of all thank all of the advocates, experts, parents, child care providers, workers, unions and others who took the time to make presentations or write submissions to the committee. Their passion and their knowledge about quality, affordable and accessible child care shone through and helped us make the bill better. There are too many people and organizations to name, but I am so grateful for their advocacy and guidance.
I am proud that we have emerged from the committee process with an improved piece of legislation. As a result of amendments put forward by the NDP, the bill includes stronger reporting requirements for greater accountability and transparency; more inclusive language that reflects the needs of children with disabilities and those from official language minority communities; recognition that the conditions of work affect the conditions of care; and an amendment to uphold the right of indigenous peoples to free, prior and informed consent on matters pertaining to their children. This acknowledgement is historic, and it is the first time since the passage of Bill C-15 that it has been enshrined in federal legislation.
This builds on other important provisions included in the original bill, including an explicit prioritization of non-profit and public child care for federal funding, something the NDP fought for and won. Witness after witness made it clear that the research overwhelmingly agrees that non-profit and public child care delivers the best outcomes and the highest quality of care for children.
I hope that after Bill C-35 becomes law, we no longer see federal money being used to expand for-profit child care in Canada, as we saw several months ago in Alberta with the federal government announcing support for 22,500 new for-profit spaces. Public money should be used to expand public and non-profit child care. Public monies need to be invested in public institutions. It is better for workers and it is better for children.
The NDP supports this bill, and I urge my colleagues from all parties to pass it unanimously to show our commitment to supporting children, families, workers and child care providers. This is an important step towards building a permanent national system of $10-a-day child care.
I want to focus my remarks today on a theme that emerged time and time again in committee: We have a child care workforce crisis in this country. Child care workers receive wages that are not livable and benefits that are not adequate. They often endure difficult working conditions. Unless we address these issues, we are putting the success of a national child care system at risk.
Who are these workers? Well, more than 98% of them are women; one-third are immigrants or non-permanent residents; and child care workers are more likely than workers in all other occupations to be racialized. They perform some of the most critical work in our society, providing education during the years most crucial to a child’s development, and yet they are treated as disposable.
The wage floor for early childhood educators in Ontario, for example, is just $19 an hour. It is just $19 an hour for providing essential work. Do members know the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto? It is $2,500 a month. This is outrageous. We are asking people to take on the work of looking after and educating our kids, and then we are not paying them enough to provide for their own kids. It is no wonder that people who trained as early childhood educators are leaving the profession to take better-paying jobs in other fields, or that many people are discouraged from entering the profession in the first place. More than any other factor, this is why we have a shortage of child care spaces across the country.
I know that the fee reductions we have been seeing as a result of the bilateral agreements with the provinces are having a huge and positive impact for thousands of families. I want to acknowledge that; I want to acknowledge that it is making their lives more affordable, but far too many others are stuck on wait-lists and cannot access the benefits of more affordable child care.
We can build all of the new spaces we want, but that means little unless well-trained, well-paid workers are put in place to staff these new centres.
I have often heard the situation in the child care sector described as a worker shortage, but let us be clear: This is not, in fact, a worker shortage; it is a wage shortage. It is a respect shortage. It is a dignity shortage. This shortage of dignity and respect is contributing to the shortage of affordable spaces.
Last week the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a report showing that almost half of younger children, which means those not yet attending kindergarten, live in “child care deserts”, where there are more than three children for every licensed child care space. In Saskatchewan, the number is 92%, and in my own province of Manitoba, it is 76%.
One of the key recommendations the report offers to address this situation is to guarantee decent wages and benefits for child care workers. We need immediate federal investments to provinces and territories to improve the wage grids of their child care staff. We also need this government to put in place a workforce strategy that ensures livable wages, better benefits, retirement security, adequate working conditions, and education and training opportunities.
I want to address the argument I often hear from my colleagues, which is that this is provincial jurisdiction.
We are building a national child care system. Without federal leadership to address this workforce crisis and improve pay, benefits and working conditions, this system will not be sustainable. It is not just workers who suffer from poor compensation; their working conditions are kids’ learning conditions. They are directly tied to the quality of care
The federal government can and must use its spending powers to raise the bar for workers. The Liberals know that they can do this. In fact, in 2021, during the 2021 election, they promised a wage floor of $25 an hour for personal support workers, an area that is also within provincial jurisdiction. Why can they not make the same promise of livable wages for child care staff, who perform different but equally essential roles in society?
We do not have to choose between $10-a-day child care and raising wages for child care workers. We can and must have both if we are going to have a successful national child care strategy. We can and must have both to ensure that kids get the best quality of care and that we are recruiting and retaining the workers we need to create more spaces so that parents can access affordable child care in the communities where they live.
I do not want this generation and the future generations of early childhood educators to have to make the same choice that I made: leaving a profession that I loved because I wanted to pay my bills. I want to live in a country where the work of early childhood educators is valued just as highly as the work of doctors, lawyers, engineers and all other professions.
The government cannot wash its hands of this responsibility. It has a leadership role to play in ensuring that every child care worker in Canada is treated with respect and dignity.
I ask this today of all of us in the House: Let us pass this bill. Let us ensure that the people who are at the heart of the national child care system that we are trying to build, without whose labour there would not be any system at all, are no longer an afterthought.
