John Godfrey

[The Budget, March 27th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I take this opportunity to talk a bit about a subject which relates to some of the previous interventions. For example, the member for Selkirk—Interlake talked about the poor condition of aboriginal families in his province. Those aboriginal people have children who are in even worse condition, so my subject is the fate and the presence of children in the most recent budget.

There were those of us both within the government caucus and across the way who agitated and worked for a children's and families' budget to be the theme of this year's millennium budget. I am looking at the hon. member for Shefford as one of the allies in this cause. In some ways we were a little disappointed. We did not get the package deal we wanted. However, let me tell the House what we did get and what we hoped to get. Part of the function of a budget speech is not only to look back to the budget but to look forward to the next budget, to the great unfinished work we have before us.

Those of us who agitate and work on behalf of children and their families see that the children and their families need two things. They need more income but they also need support at the community level with services. I particularly talk about the case of parents with young pre-school children.

What was good about the budget from the point of view of child and family policy was that we focused on three matters of income. First, we reduced taxes which put more disposable income in the hands of families with young children. Second, because we wanted to make a statement that the early years are the most important years, we extended the parental benefit system from six months to a year for those children who are born after December 31, 2000. Third, we increased the amount available for the child tax credit and the national child benefit system.

All those things are important because they put more disposable income in the hands of families with young children, but disposable income alone will not be the answer to what families need.

What families need in their daily lives is for there to be a system of support at the community level. Whatever choices they may make in the workplace, whether they choose to work inside or outside the home, and whatever degree of risk their children may or may not be exposed to, the community will be there for them.

With the change in family life over the last 30 years we know that the traditional role of community fulfilled by informal networks has disappeared. With 70% of Canadian women of child bearing age working either part time or full time, we know that neighbourhoods have changed.

It was therefore interesting to look at the unfinished work of the budget, the first social project of the 21st century for this parliament, and the following words of the finance minister in his speech:

That is why federal and provincial governments agreed to develop a national children's agenda, to expand the capacity of governments, voluntary organizations and our communities to provide the services and support upon which so many of our families and their children rely.

He pointed to the hope of the government for a national action plan to be arrived at by December of this year, with provincial governments on a system of support services at the community level to help young children and their families.

This will be the first great test of the social union framework agreement. It will require the provinces and the federal government to sit down and work out what a national action plan would mean that would allow communities to access an early childhood development services fund to do a better job in filling in the gaps, which we all know to be present in our communities, if we are in the business of raising young children.

This will be an extraordinarily important and difficult operation. I hope we arrive at such an agreement but it will require the agreement of the provinces. It will require the support of communities to show us what they would do with the money. It will require the support of parents in whatever situation they find themselves to put pressure on us as politicians to do it. In turn, I hope it will trigger in the next budget a fund for community development services for our youngest children.

This will not be an easy matter, but what I find so heartening is that within this caucus and across parliament there are people who are dedicated to improving the lives of children and their families.

All of us understand that the magic of a democratic society rests in its civil society, in its neighbourhoods and communities. The family may be the building block upon which we construct family policy without understanding the magic of community. Why is it that some communities do a better job in preparing young children for school and making them confident about their future? Why is it that other communities with the same or more income do not do such a good job? It goes beyond income. It goes to the matter of social cohesion. It goes to the things which will overcome income if we do it right.

You have in your constituency, Mr. Speaker, a community which does this job. Port Colborne is an example of an area which goes beyond income to produce a kind of wovenness. Our challenge as we look to the future budget is to support such communities. The federal government and the provinces should sit down together on a national action plan that will put in place the things families need, whether it is child care, parenting resources, parenting courses, drop-in centres, playgrounds, nutrition programs, and in particular nutrition programs for expectant mothers because that is when so much crucial brain development takes place.

We need to put in place a system so that every family knows where to find the support it needs and we do not have mothers living in isolation, cut off from the community. We need to do it in a way which recognizes the character of every Canadian community. If we do our job well we reduce the risks all Canadian children experience.

What is so terrifying about our situation? It is true that poverty is a major risk factor for Canadian children and that 40% of poor children experience emotional or learning difficulties when they are in school. It is also true that 20% of the best off children in the country also experience those risks. There are more middle class children with emotional and learning difficulties in school than poor children because the middle class is so much bigger.

My plea is for all of us as we look to next year's budget to understand that we have a great piece of work ahead of us in working toward a national action plan to provide services at the community level for Canada's children. If we do our job right, this may be the greatest thing for which all of us will ultimately be remembered.

[Committees Of The House, December 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, an interim report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities emanating from the sub-committee on children and youth at risk with proposals for the year 2000 budget concerning a children and families budget.

[Supply, December 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, earlier, in response to the proposed bill, the leader of the opposition made a three-part proposal to the Quebec national assembly and I would like to put a question to the hon. member in this regard.

The three parts of his proposal are as follows. The first part was that it was up to the Quebec national assembly to define the question and the conditions of the referendum. The second was that the leader of the opposition gave his support to the principle of 50% plus one. The third was that the whole matter should be in accordance with the ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada. Does the hon. member agree with this proposal?

[Child Poverty, November 24th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, today we recognize the 10th anniversary of the all-party resolution to work toward the elimination of child poverty by the year 2000. Today is no day for celebration.

As Campaign 2000 noted in a report made public today—and I recognize the presence of some of the members of Campaign 2000 in the gallery this afternoon—as a country we have collectively failed to reduce child poverty rates over the last decade. Indeed the number of poor children in Canada has increased.

But nor should today be a day of mourning or condemnation. As the recent Speech from the Throne indicated, children have become the top priority of this government. Let today rather be a day of reflection and rededication; reflection on our failure certainly, but also a recommitment to our national mission of improving the lives of all of our children.

[Elections In Haiti, November 5th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, Haiti will be holding democratic elections in March of next year. What will the federal government be doing to support this process?

[Speech From The Throne, November 3rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the subcommittee to which the member referred is a subcommittee of the HRD committee. It is the subcommittee on children and youth at risk. So far we have only been able to produce an interim report.

First it is important to say that we are an all-party committee populated by real supporters of children. It has gone beyond partisanship. We are really working together on a common purpose.

What we have tried to do is to understand both risk factors for children, but also what are the best developmental pathways; what can we know from the science base about what works and how we can make sure that that knowledge gets across the country. The task for us between now and the budget, should our committee be reconstituted by the all seeing wisdom of the chairman of the human resources development committee, is to focus on the unfinished business.

We must determine what it is that we can do by way of encouragement and demonstration to show how communities are already doing this and that this is not an abstract reality. There is a huge amount of enthusiasm across Canada for this. The committee can highlight the successes and give us heart so that we may make national what we have been doing so successfully in communities across Canada.

[Speech From The Throne, November 3rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Peterborough.

In a sense my remarks directly relate to what was just said.

My speech will deal mainly with early childhood, and the challenge of finding the means to work along with the provinces. I believe we can make considerable progress together.

How can we as governments, federal, provincial and territorial, work together with communities to support children and their families, particularly very young children, so that the development of those children can be as good as we can collectively make it? That is my subject.

The reason I have chosen that subject, in the context of the Speech from the Throne, is something which the Prime Minister said in his response to the Speech from the Throne. He said “Together with the provinces we have begun to put in place the national children's agenda to improve supports for families and children. I believe this work has to be accelerated. So do provincial premiers. We must move as quickly as possible from talk to action. Today I challenge all governments to have in place by December 2000 a federal-provincial agreement consistent with the social union framework to strengthen supports for early childhood development, an agreement on principles and objectives on measuring outcomes and reporting to Canadians and an agreement on a five year timetable for increased federal and provincial funding to achieve our shared objectives”.

The challenge is how we can do such a deal. How can we work with the other governments in the country to do the right deal and not just any deal for children? How can we do it in about 14 months? How can we do it by December 2000?

I think the only way we can conceive of a deal is to think of it as sort of a national project for all of our children.

We have a number of elements of success in place already. The first is perhaps the whole question of knowledge. What do we know about optimum developmental paths for all children, particularly those in the zero to six population? As the finance minister said yesterday in his annual economic update, quoting Dr. Fraser Mustard, “There is powerful new evidence from neuroscience that the early years of development, from conception to age six, particularly for the first three years, set the base for competence and coping skills that will affect learning, behaviour and health throughout life”.

The science also tells us that an additional factor for success is what we do at the community level. It is not simply a question of socioeconomic status, it is what happens at the level where we all live and breath, the level of the neighbourhood. Social cohesion is a positive factor which goes beyond income in explaining why some kids do better than others. There was a recent article in the Globe and Mail on Port Colborne, Ontario which talked about “wovenness” as being the magic, the secret which takes us beyond income into good results for kids.

The first asset that we can bring to the table is the knowledge base which is growing exponentially in this area. The second is that the provinces are increasingly on side. It was extraordinary to hear the recent Speech from the Throne from Ontario in which the lieutenant governor said these words on behalf of her government:

Your government believes that, to realize their full potential, children must get off to the best possible start in life. The most important period of development is the three years immediately following birth. That is why it is so important to nurture and support children's development from the moment they are born.

Building on the pioneering work of world renowned expert Dr. Fraser Mustard and child advocate the Hon. Margaret McCain, the government is committed to a bold new initiative that ultimately will extend early development opportunities to every child and parent in Ontario. Recently announced demonstration projects are merely the beginning. Your government is determined to remain the national leader in early child development.

That is the Government of Ontario. It is surprising perhaps to some, considering its other social policies, but that is a great one.

We know that in British Columbia the Hon. Moe Sihota recently announced a major new initiative in the area of child care and invited federal participation once again.

We are very familiar with the case of Quebec, which made a societal promise to its children, particularly its very young ones, with its $5-a-day child care centres. They are a kind of gold standard for the rest of the country. They are the summit we are all striving to reach, to use the vocabulary of social union.

We can find allies among the provinces across the country. In a meeting held in Kananaskis with the social services ministers as recently as October 26, ministers said the following:

Ministers also reviewed joint work currently under way in both social services and health sectors on early childhood development, including possible areas where governments can work together. Ministers agreed that this work should form the basis for responding to the federal government's invitation in the Speech from the Throne to work together in this area. They committed to working with federal, provincial, and territorial ministers of health to move forward as quickly as possible on early childhood development.

The next day their counterparts, the ministers who constitute the provincial-territorial council on social policy renewal, made the same point:

Ministers stressed the urgent need for action on children's issues, building on the leadership taken by provinces and territories and the co-operative work with the federal government. Ministers emphasized the need to move forward on the national children's agenda.

Now seems to be the time for us all to go forward, as we have the provinces enthusiastically responding to the Speech from the Throne.

Of all the assets we can bring to the table, including our own efforts, the knowledge base and the provinces, the greatest assets surely are the communities themselves. Communities are where we live and breathe. Communities are where our children develop through schools, through play contacts, through all of the things which make life worth living in our private lives.

I find this the most exciting part. This morning I was at a breakfast meeting in Ottawa-Carleton with the Success by Six group, an extraordinary alliance spearheaded by the Ottawa-Carleton Board of Education and the United Way, bringing together 85 different entities, agencies, the voluntary sector and government departments, to work together to improve outcomes for the zero to six population. The spirit of enterprise and excitement in the room of working together to produce a kind of seamless web of services so that all children and their parents will be given optimum support was tremendous. It was heartening. We have in the nation's capital a demonstration project, one chosen by the Ontario government as well.

Last week I was in Toronto with a similar group, called the Early Years Action Group, from North York. It is happening across the country. In Vancouver we can find Opportunities for Youth. In Montreal we have Un Deux Trois Go. In other words, we have a huge resource base.

We have allies like the United Way of Canada, which we are aware of this month as its flags are fluttering across Canada to remind us of the annual campaign. This network covers 87% of Canada. There is a huge sector of civil society that wants to participate in the national children's agenda.

What do we need to do? We need a deal which is something like the Canada Health Act. The Prime Minister talks of objectives and principles. We also need a deal which deals with outcomes. The Prime Minister talks of outcomes and accountability in public reporting. We need a deal which has money. The money has to come in the form of an early childhood development services fund, with resources coming from the provinces and the federal government, accessed by communities after they have determined what they need to do the right job for kids from birth to six, so that those children will be ready to learn and ready for life by the time they enter the school system.

That is what we need to do. It means that we have to sign on a group of provinces. It means that we have to see working examples in the next 12 months of how communities can work together, such as they are doing in Ottawa-Carleton and in Ontario in general.

We need a plan which focuses on all children and, as Minister Marland of Ontario said the other day, a plan which is affordable, available and accessible to all children.

We have a huge task to complete this part of the promise of the Speech from the Throne. It will involve all of us in all of our communities doing our best to work with the provincial governments, the federal government, communities and the voluntary sector to make this dream of a national project of making all of Canada's children as ready to learn as they possibly can be by the time they enter school a reality.

[Committees Of The House, June 9th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fifth report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and Status of Persons with Disabilities.

This is the report of the subcommittee on children and youth at risk, which I had the pleasure to chair.

[Division No. 475, May 31st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to add my vote to the no list.

[An Act To Incorporate The Alliance Of Manufacturers & Exporters Canada, May 31st, 1999]

moved that Bill S-18, an act respecting the Alliance of Manufacturers & Exporters Canada, be read the second time and, by unanimous consent, referred to committee of the whole.

(Motion adopted, bill read the second time, considered in committee of the whole and reported to the House without amendment, concurred in at report stage, read the third time and passed)