Barry Devolin

[Department of Social Development Act, June 1st, 2005]

Madam Speaker, my colleague mentioned that in recent months we have seen a government that is willing, on regular occasion, to ignore the wishes of Parliament. Given that it was only a few months ago that this House voted against bills that would split the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, basically two similar bills were brought forward to create two new ministries. Members of Parliament defeated both of those bills. The government summarily chose to ignore those decisions and to proceed anyway.

I have two questions. Does my colleague think that this process that we are going through is relevant at all, given our recent experience? Does he believe that the government will probably go ahead and do what it wants to do, regardless of how members of Parliament vote on these two related bills?

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2005]

Mr. Chair, the minister has said many times that this is the first of many steps. I have taken the Quebec model and used the numbers to determine how many spaces are being provided in Quebec and extrapolated that cost structure across the country. It would cost in excess of $10 billion a year to implement that nationwide for all children.

The federal government is talking about $1 billion a year which begs the question, where is the other $9 billion coming from? If I were a provincial or municipal official, I would be deeply concerned that the federal government was going to launch something with great fanfare and I was going to end up with a large part of the tab.

Ontario has early years centres which are actually geared toward parents taking their children in. The children and the parents can have an enriched learning opportunity. Many stay at home parents use these centres on a regular basis, including my wife with our own children. It would appear that the Ontario government is moving away from that. It is starving the early years centres of funds and moving those dollars into the school based system. I see there may be some disagreement with that point.

I would like to ask the minister, does he support the early years centre program in Ontario? Does he think it is valuable for the work it does for stay at home parents? Will he ensure, in his negotiations with Ontario, that early years centres are properly supported?

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2005]

Mr. Chair, I would like to continue with the same line of questioning. I have heard the minister say on many occasions that this is a program that will be universally accessible in a similar way to public education. If I can speak in the context of Ontario, which is my home province and that of the minister, we see now that the Ontario government is moving to focus its day care and early learning opportunities within the elementary school system. It is taking JK and SK and building day care into the schools.

I think the point of universality is that something can be theoretically available to everyone, which if it is run in a school, it is. However, people who choose not to use it still have to pay for it. Stay at home parents could choose not to use it. They are essentially bearing the cost twice, once through their taxes to pay for the program for everybody else and then they pay for it out of their own pocket through lost income if one of the two parents chooses to stay at home.

My fear is what we will have in Ontario is a program based in the school system which operates from 9 a.m. to 3 or 4 p.m. Monday to Friday, with summers off. In my riding, which is rural, I have many retail workers who work evenings, weekends and in the summer. I think for many people who are focused at least as much on the custodial child care and the cost of the custodial child care part of this equation, as they are to the early learning, they feel the system which we appear to be moving toward in Ontario will inherently discriminate against them.

It will work well for professionals who tend to work from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Friday, but it will not work well for shift workers or people who work irregular hours.

What seems to be in the process of being implemented in Ontario is not universal to everyone, is not accessible to everyone and ironically it will discriminate against many people who are in lower income levels because they work irregular hours. They feel that this system will not work for them. Not only will it not work for them, but they will end up paying for part of it through their taxes.

That is why we say that if the financial assistance flows through the parents and the parents have options to choose different choices, including full time professional care, then this would ensure that all parents would have access to some financial support for their child care costs.

I would appreciate it if the minister would comment on that.

[Finance, May 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, over the past few weeks Canadians have witnessed an unprecedented orgy of spending by the Liberal government of almost $1 billion a day. The two most notable examples are the $4.6 billion deal with the NDP and the $5.75 billion deal with Dalton McGuinty.

All this caused me to wonder, how much is a billion dollars? A billion dollars is one thousand million dollars. It is enough to pay a reward of $1.8 million for every murder committed in Canada last year. It is enough to run every courtroom in this country for a year and still have enough left over to buy new MRI machines for 20 needy hospitals.

The Prime Minister boasts that he developed a reputation as a prudent fiscal manager during his 10 years as minister of finance. Over a mere three week period, Canadians have witnessed him single-handedly destroy that reputation in his desperate attempt to cling to power.

The Prime Minister should not misunderstand what happened in the House last evening. He did not receive a pardon for his inexcusable actions. He merely received a stay, because it is only a matter of time before Canadian voters deliver their verdict on his shameful misconduct.

[Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act, March 23rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I sit with the member for Peterborough on the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills Development, Social Development and the Status of Persons With Disabilities.

My question has to do with ministerial accountability. This is an issue I have raised before. As we all know, before HRDC was split into two ministries, there was a significant scandal in that ministry regarding the minister's inability to keep track of what was going on. The defence at that time was that the ministry was simply too large and it was impossible for one person to know everything that was happening there.

Since the ministry has been split, we have two separate ministries that are linked in many ways. They are not separate but connected in some ways. It raises an issue of ministerial accountability. Our system is based on the principle of ministerial accountability. Everything that happens in government, a minister is responsible for that.

I would like to hear comments from the parliamentary secretary. Would he agree that when we have programs under one minister but services being delivered by staff from another ministry, as will be the case between social development and human resources skills development, there may be gaps in the principal ministerial accountability?

[Rotary International, February 23rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to pay tribute to Rotary International

Rotary began 100 years ago today when Paul Harris met with three colleagues to create a professional club that would serve their community. They called it the Rotary Club of Chicago after the early practice of rotating weekly meetings among members' offices.

To say that Harris' idea took off is quite an understatement. Today's celebration will be marked by more than 1.2 million men and women, belonging to more than 31,000 clubs worldwide. What a success story.

My family has experienced the benefits of Rotary firsthand.

My father, Doug, participated in a Rotary group study exchange to India in 1974 and was a member of the Haliburton Rotary for many years, serving as its president in 1982-83.

As for myself, I spent a year of high school in the Netherlands as a Rotary exchange student. For this experience I am profoundly grateful. I have also been a member of the Haliburton club.

To Rotarians in this House and across Canada, I wish them all the best on this celebration of their 100th anniversary.

[Supply, February 15th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague references the OECD study. I said earlier this morning that when we had the authors appear before our committee a week or two ago, I asked one of the authors, who appeared by satellite link from Paris, a question about his comparison of test results from kids in what he called high quality environments with low quality environments. When I asked him about kids who were raised by their parents at home, his answer was that actually those children do very well in tests.

I value early years learning opportunities for children, but I reject the notion that parents, with some support and some help, cannot do that job as well or better at home themselves.

My second point, and I think this is really important, is that not only are small children absorbing facts and figures, they are absorbing values. Many parents from many different backgrounds are very uncomfortable putting their two year olds and three year olds in a public education system that they feel is further and further from their own values. I would like to hear the member's comments on that.

[Supply, February 15th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I believe in accountability. My point is that provincial members are accountable. The member for Sault Ste. Marie will know that in Ontario the ridings are essentially the same.

I do not understand why the federal government feels it has to be accountable for these dollars. The provincial governments by constitutional mandate are responsible for these services. If a province misspends the dollars, then the taxpayers, the citizens and the parents of that province have the right to deal directly with the province. I do not think the federal government needs to play nanny to the provinces.

[Supply, February 15th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, first, I have never called the minister names. I do not think there is anything I said in my statement today that was a misstatement of facts. I want to clarify that. In terms of the provinces wanting to work with the federal government, I would say some provinces do and some do not.

I want to make a couple of points.

First, many people believe that government should help them in the provision of child care services and early learning opportunities. That is a provincial jurisdiction. It has been a provincial jurisdiction. Many provinces, including Quebec and Ontario, have made significant strides in those areas. The provincial governments are more than able and capable of dealing with this issue. I do not think that there is either wisdom, or accountability or competence in Ottawa that cannot be found in provincial capitals. I do not agree with the notion that somehow the federal government is necessary to coordinate or to make this happen.

In terms of the money, obviously provincial governments of all political stripes, which are struggling to balance their budgets and fund their programs, are interested when the federal government comes along offering money. I have said many times before that we have a fiscal imbalance in Canada and that there are officials from two levels of government, namely municipal and provincial governments, who go to bed every night and worry about how they will pay for things. It is only one level of government that goes to bed at night and tries to figure out how it will spend all the money.

That is my point in this case. If the federal government is offering money to the provinces to help them with the costs of child care, I am sure that the provinces will accept that money. I do not accept the notion that the federal government in any way can bring things to the debate that the provinces could not find themselves.

Second, we are not just talking about tax cuts. We also are talking about tax credits. If the federal government has made a commitment to investing federal dollars in child care, rather than flow those dollars through large institutions, where they will inevitably absorb a large amount of that money, we think those dollars should be flowed through parents so parents can make decisions about how they want to spend those dollars. Parents in different provinces, based on the options available to them, can determine what is right for them.

[Supply, February 15th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today and participate in this debate on child care in Canada. I want to note that I will be splitting my time with my colleague from Edmonton—Leduc this afternoon.

I have a keen interest in this subject for a variety of reasons. First, I am a member of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills Development, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. As such, our committee has talked about the proposed national day care strategy. When legislation comes forward, we will no doubt be reviewing that. Therefore, I have a professional parliamentary interest in it.

Second, in a previous life, when I worked at Queen's Park for the provincial government, I served as the Ontario premier's special adviser for children's education. That was at the time when Dr. Fraser Mustard delivered his report on early years learning in Ontario. This is a seminal work and speaks to many of the issues before us today.

Third, I have some personal experience as a teacher. I am a certified ESL teacher. One time in my past I taught English to young children, preschoolers and kindergarten children in South Korea, so I have had some experience.

Last, but not least, I am the father of two children under 30 months of age, so I have a personal interest. I deal with early years learning every morning at my breakfast table and every night before they go to bed.

As a result of all these, last fall I decided to create an early years round table in my riding. I wanted to talk to people active in early years learning and day care. I do not profess to be an expert in the field, but I wanted to bring together a group of people with a variety of perspectives who could inform me on what was going on in the riding, what were some of the challenges they saw going forward and what they were looking for in public policy in this area.

My riding is in central Ontario, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock. It is rural. It is a scattering of small villages and people living between those villages. One thing we have learned over the years is that often programs devised by experts or civil servants living in downtown Ottawa or downtown Toronto often do not work well in a rural community.

Through my discussions with my early years round table and with other groups in my riding, I have identified several concerns going forward in terms of what the government doing. I raise these in a general context because at this point none of us actually knows what the government is proposing. There has been much talk. It has been stressed many times today that the Liberal government's commitment to do something about early years learning and about day care goes back 10 years. On the one hand we are all taking the, we will believe it when we see it approach. Beyond that, the minister has talked in generalities about the program, but we really do not know what is in it yet.

My comments are not specific criticisms or our concerns about the government's program, given that we have not seen it. Rather they are more general comments which I have heard, and they fall under three different categories.

The first group of comments have come from working families in my riding. One concern is that many people work irregular hours. They work shift work. If they are in retail, they may work evenings and weekends. They want to ensure that whatever government does to help them with child care or to help them pay for the cost of child care, that it will be sufficiently flexible for someone who works a 4 to 11 shift or who works on Sunday will have access to a program.

This is particularly true in a rural community where we do not have the critical mass in many of these small villages to create a government owned and operated system. At present, many people scramble to find child care for their kids and pay for it. There is a concern that the minister and the government, in conjunction with our Ontario Liberal government and the Ontario Liberal minister, would like to move toward a national system, or what I would call kind of a monolithic publicly owned and operated system that looks a lot like schools.

Ontario has had grade one for a long time. We have had kindergarten for many years. More recent, junior kindergarten was introduced in Ontario. I guess the concern is we went from SK to JK. Now we will have JJK and JJJK. Basically, we are extending the elementary school system down.

For anyone who works shift work or weekends, the notion that the schoolhouse will not now accept two year olds and three year olds does nothing to solve their problem, if they do not happen to have a 9:00 to 3:00 job, Monday to Friday, with holidays off.

That is a real concern in Ontario. Recent moves by the Ontario minister to introduce day care in schools on the opposite half day of when children are in half day kindergarten suggests that this is where the government will go. That will do nothing for working families in a rural riding such as mine who have to put their kids in care during irregular hours.

The second group of concerns has to do with families who choose to have one parent stay at home with their children. For most families, this is a financial sacrifice. It is a decision that people make because they feel it is important that one of the two parents stays home with the child during those early and formative years.

The concern is this. If government moves forward with some public system, similar to the public school system we all pay for through our taxes, but it is optional whether we participate, those parents who choose to stay at home will effectively be discriminated against, in the sense that they will pay through their taxes for the public system. However, if they choose not to participate, they will also have to pay for the care of the children themselves.

I asked the minister a question this morning. We had the authors of the recent OECD report on early years before our committee a couple of weeks ago. There was much discussion around test results of children who come out of different kinds of programs. One of the authors who participated via video conference from Paris noted that children who stayed at home with the parents did very well in the scores.

I reject the notion that children who are looked after at home by their parents or by relatives will inevitably perform more poorly in tests and will perform more poorly when they ultimately move on to elementary education.

The third point I want to raise has also been brought up many times today. It has to do with cost. The quick math is that the Minister of Social Development frequently refers to the Quebec model, which costs somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion. I am not saying the minister is saying this, but if we put in a similar system is across the country, it would cost about $10 billion a year. The federal government has made a commitment of $5 billion over five years. That is $1 billion a year, which is approximately 10% of the final cost of what this program would cost at full build out.

The minister has said many times, including last Friday when he was interviewed in Vancouver, that this is the first step, that basically the government is opening the door. A billion dollars is a significant amount, but he recognizes it is not nearly enough to pay for what he hopes ultimately blooms from his idea. I agree with him. It is not nearly enough. My question is from where will the other $9 billion come?

Both provincial and municipal officials have had lots of experience with federal governments that announce some grand strategy and program, get everyone excited, get everyone's expectations up, then the federal government puts a small amount of money on the table and the provinces and municipalities are left picking up the balance.

In this case, given that it is only a five year commitment, there is even concern that if the federal government steps back five years from now, the provinces and the municipalities will be left carrying the entire bag.

Any sort of a universal national day care system, even if it is one implemented by the provinces, will ultimately cost many billions of dollars. I suspect it will cost $10 billion or more. The question is, and provincial and municipal governments have the right to ask the question, who will come up with the rest of that money? If it is the provinces, then they will want to have a say at the front end.

The motion we have brought forward today is eminently sensible. The government has made a commitment to reduce taxes to low and middle income families. That is a step in the right direction. If dollars flow through parents, it gives parents the choice to provide or to find the kind of child care and early learning opportunities which work for them in their circumstances.

I agree with many of my colleagues who have pointed out that this is federal incursion into provincial jurisdiction. It seems to me that the federal government has enough of its own problems right now. It also has its own responsibilities which is not doing a very good job of looking after, such as our national armed forces. Why is it wandering into areas of provincial jurisdiction?

I would encourage all my colleagues on all sides of the House to support the amendment. Let us move forward with the program that will ultimately empower parents and put them in a position where they can make the choices that are best for their families.