Denise Savoie

[Canada Student Financial Assistance Act, October 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-284 at a very dark time for post-secondary education in Canada. Last week we saw cuts to student employment programs and literacy. Over the summer we saw a consultation process that was really not a consultation process at all. It seemed to exclude many student groups which are most concerned by the issue of post-secondary education. It seems as if the Conservatives want to leave us a paper country.

In my opinion, there are ways to meet the unique cultural needs of Quebec while providing equitable treatment for all parts of Canada. It is upsetting to see young people mortgaging their lives—the result of many years of cuts to provincial transfer payments by the former Liberal government.

That government had 13 years to implement the type of progressive legislation introduced by a member this morning. The situation could deteriorate with the Conservatives' “every man for himself” policy.The goal in Canada should be for all graduates of secondary schools to have access to post-secondary education or training. Bill C-284 is a first step in that direction. It would ensure that Canada access grants for students from low-income families, presently available for only the first year of education, would be available to eligible students for each year of a program of studies . Low-income families are not benefiting from current programs.

This bill does have significant shortcomings but it represents the most progressive and effective way of putting money directly into the hands of students who do not have the means to pay their tuition fees, that is at the time they most need these monies. This approach would allow us to increase access to post-secondary education in contrast to the number of disparate federal and provincial programs presently labelled as student financial assistance such as tax credits, savings plans, the Millennium Scholarship Foundation and the very unwieldy Canada student loans program.

The NDP will support this bill because, as I stated, it is the first measure—one we have been awaiting for a long time—to help students and their families with rising education costs, which have become prohibitive in many of our provinces.

I want to go back to this grant. In its first year, Canada access grants for students from low income families were for the first year of study only, the lesser of $3,000, assessed need or 50% of tuition. The Canada access grant for students with permanent disabilities was for each year of study, but the lesser of $2,000 or assessed need. This was clearly inadequate.

We have to look at who is benefiting from our existing policies.

In their first year, Canada access grants were awarded to roughly 3% of full time college and university students, 22,000 students from low income families and approximately 9,100 students with permanent disabilities, costing almost $52.6 million.

Let us look at the other programs. During that same period, $462 million was paid as matching Canada education saving grants, CESGs, to 1.8 million children in families who could afford to invest in RESPs many years before their children's studies. In contrast, the new Canada learning bond for low income families to invest in RESPs, helping 7,271 children in families who could not invest in RESPs.

In 2001 individuals with income over $70,000 claimed over $164 million in federal education and tuition tax credits. As Ross Finnie, a research fellow at the School of Policy Studies at Queen's University said, “These huge chunks of money are going where it's not needed. It wouldn't be so bad if there was enough money going into where it's really needed, but there isn't”.

The millennium foundation is set to expire in 2009. There are a number of lessons to be had from its work, in particular: its focus on grants over loans; its needs-based assessment rather than income-based; its experience collaborating with provinces and territories; and its high ratio of direct assistance to operating costs. We should examine these experiences and best practices in developing a national needs-based grants system.

Clearly, the patchwork of student assistance in Canada does not adequately target those students and families in greatest need. This is why we support the bill.

The Canadian Federation of Students, which has sent over 50 student leaders to the Hill this week, will look very closely at the support for the bill as expressed around the House. The Canadian Federation of Students and the Canadian Association of University Teachers have both called for a simpler, central system of needs-based grants to replace this patchwork assistance that we call financial aid.

The NDP vigorously opposed reliance of Liberal and Conservative governments on tax credits instead of real investment in post-secondary education. Research substantiates our concern. Through this debate, I will reiterate our alternate vision of a national needs-based grants system.

Bill C-284 could be the building block of such a national system, with a number of changes to address its flaws. Let us look at some of the amendments that will be necessary. One is a needs-based assessment rather than an income-based one, Others are removing exclusionary clauses against mature students, introducing a mechanism to include financially independent students and including targeted grants to account for the realities of rural and aboriginal students.

The bill is about the role of the federal government in post-secondary education. The Conservatives would have us believe that there is no role for the federal government in social programs and in post-secondary education, and that seems to suit the Bloc Québécois. However, let there be no mistake. Under the Conservatives, we are returning to the pre-1950s, where provincial governments had sole responsibility for post-secondary education, with the horrific inequities that existed between provinces.

By turning post-secondary education back entirely to provinces, as the Conservative government seems to be leaning toward, many Canadians will begin to wonder just what it means to be Canadian.

[Literacy, September 29th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, over nine million Canadian adults need enhanced literacy skills to succeed in our society. First the government called these adults “fat to be cut” and now it is calling them “repair work” that can be ignored.

Despite misleading answers in this House, the government does not even believe that fighting adult illiteracy is worth one dollar per Canadian per year.

Canada's literacy movement has told us that these cuts have devastated local on the ground literacy projects.

When will the government reverse its shortsighted cuts?

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, September 29th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, Victoria is known to be the city of gardens, not the city of forests, but we will be impacted by this very bad deal. By giving up control over our resources, by signing an agreement that encourages the export of raw logs and by preventing and not encouraging value added industry, all the communities, even those that do not have forests, will be impacted.

In my riding there is a fine woodworking company that sells incredibly beautiful furniture around the world, and this is the kind of small business that will be impacted.

I wonder if my colleague, whose comments I appreciated, would speak to the issue of value added industry and the impact that this deal might have on those small businesses?

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government obviously believes, along with its advisers REAL Women, that the work on equity is done.

I thank my Liberal colleague for her comments on Status of Women Canada. I am aware in my community of the work it has done through networking and supporting women's groups.

The Conservative government does not seem to be aware that many women in Canada work full time and earn 71% of what men earn. Women are more likely to have precarious jobs that offer no security or pension. Women are disproportionately represented among the poor in Canada. There is a lot more work to be done to achieve equity in Canada.

In light of the comments of the President of the Treasury Board this morning pitting children against adults, I am wondering if the hon. member thinks the President of the Treasury Board should take a literacy course on illiteracy.

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I want to raise one question that appears to be completely ignored by the Conservatives, that is the representation of women and other minority groups in the government. To judge by their numbers, this is not very important to the Conservatives. Yet, giving women access to power is a question of justice, a condition of democracy and it is not by slashing programs that seek to assist women in the pursuit of equality in various fields of our society that we will have more women in Parliament.

I wonder if my colleague has any remarks to make on this subject.

[Petitions, September 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition on behalf of 1,436 Canadians in my community in and around Victoria who call on the government to provide for U.S. war resisters to have sanctuary in our country.

The petitioners ask the government to show its commitment to international law by not returning conscientious objectors to the United States where they could face incarceration or other punishment because they refuse to serve in the Iraq war, a war that many deem illegal under international law and a war opposed by many Canadians.

[Government Programs, September 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, this Conservative government made cuts without any debate, without any consultation.

More than 12 programs essential to the development of francophone and Acadian communities will be seriously affected, including programs for literacy and court challenges.

This is quite a shock for all minority communities.

What about Bill S-3, which was supported by the Conservatives at the time and aimed to strengthen the government's obligation to respect and promote the Official Languages Act?

And what about the 29 unresolved complaints?

The Conservative government has placed minority communities at the bottom of its agenda.

The NDP and the organizations affected by these cuts demand explanations and immediate action to re-establish funding for the survival of these programs and our francophone communities.

[Early Learning and Child Care Act, September 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I sure wish the Liberals would get new talking points. They need to remember that it was the Canadian people who made that decision, not the NDP with 19 members.

[Early Learning and Child Care Act, September 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative claim of providing choice in child care is entirely bogus. There is nothing to show that giving people a small or even a medium amount of money creates or sustains choice. The person that the member was referring to is a very lucky person, but how many people in Victoria have that choice? I would suggest perhaps one in 100,000 across Canada.

A small payment to parents will not create new early learning and child care services, or even allow parents to afford and access the services that their children need. A real plan would have standards and goals, and timelines for building. Building a hospital does not provide the needed services of doctors and nurses or in fact all the workers in the same way that the Conservative plan will not create those early learning opportunities that are so needed to give our children a head start.

As a result of it being taxed back, the allowance will give a wealthy banker's wife more money than the single parent. It is entirely appropriate for parents who can stay at home and wish to do so and be as involved as they can be in the parenting part. Parenting and child support are completely supportive of each other.

[Early Learning and Child Care Act, September 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to support the NDP's bill on early learning and child care programs. Canadians have been waiting a long time, 10 years, for the federal government to enact such legislation. I would like to use my time today to present an overview of the issue.

This year, Raffi Cavoukian, the award-winning children's songwriter and recipient of the Order of Canada, gave me a book entitled Child Honouring: How to Turn This World Around, which has inspired me to present this bill. This is not a book that is either particularly for or against child care, but it expresses the extreme vulnerability of children to their environment in the early years. In the Dalai Lama's preface to the book, he states that societies will advance only by putting children front and centre in our policies and our program development.

The debate today is about the policies that are best able to achieve that goal in helping us advance.

Canadian parents desperately need affordable, high quality child care to ensure those key early learning opportunities. Canada's economy and social fabric are best served with a quality early learning system that gets our children off to the best possible start.

Instead, the Conservatives have chosen a child care program that has nothing to do with child care. According to their research, and by their own admission, their plan will have very little impact on parents' child care choices. It is nothing more than a tiny subsidy for daycares, a vote-buying plan that might look good on the surface but that, in reality, fails to create a single daycare space for families who need them.

This empty plan seems to be a clear reflection of the Conservative Party of Canada's narrow vision of a federal government whose only role in social policy is to reduce taxes.

Canadians need a national preschool education and child care program that gives all Canadian children affordable, good-quality opportunities, regardless of the province or territory they live in or their family's income.

The NDP child care act in the bill is actually about child care and early learning. With this bill, we will ensure reliable provincial and territorial transfers for child care spaces, while enshrining in law the principles of accessibility, universality, accountability, inclusiveness, quality and educational development. The early learning and child care act can be a cornerstone of social policy for Canadian families.

I would like first to speak to the need in Canada. Studies have repeatedly found that child care programs in Canada are simply inadequate in comparison to other countries. An OECD study recently put Canada at the bottom. Over the summer, my conversation with hundreds of Canadian parents across Canada painfully confirmed the inadequacy of child care. Hundreds of parents like Cathy Rikley, who has a 15 and a half month old baby, spent months searching for quality day care that had available space that she could afford on her salary. She worried incessantly about leaving her baby in less than ideal situations.

In my riding of Victoria the cost for day care is $800 a month. In one Victoria day care centre, the Cridge Centre, there are 47 babies and 50 on the waiting list. The group day care has 56 spots for three to five year olds and 66 children on the waiting list. Another day care surveyed had over 80 on the waiting list. Some day care workers told me parents register as soon as they know they are expecting a child in the hope of securing a space. That is shameful.

For all the trumpeting the Conservatives do about choice in child care, they entirely ignore how stressed and stretched parents are. In the perfect Conservative world it seems there is never a single parent family and in two parent families they can always afford the second parent to stay at home. However, in a complicated and increasingly unregulated market economy, juggling family and work is an overwhelming task for very many Canadian families. If they cannot make it, the Conservatives will tell them it is their fault. They are not working hard enough. Let it be said that it is precisely this kind of unregulated market that Conservatives support through their policies that is forcing many parents back to work.

The $100 a month and pennies in GST savings do not cut it with most Canadian families. Look at Victoria's housing costs. The average price for a single family home in greater Victoria last month, August 2006, was $510,000. Families simply cannot cope.

The role of the federal government in this case should be to pool collective resources together and work collaboratively with provinces according to their needs to ensure all Canadians have access to basic social programs.

This child care bill represents Canadians working together to make a better life for our families, to give the best possible life to our children. It is needed. Our children are worth it and Canadians agree.

A 2002 national poll found that 86% of all Canadians believe that there can be a publicly funded child care system that makes quality child care available to all children in Canada.

The arguments are not only social, they are also economic, something maybe the Conservatives think they understand. For every $1 spent on child care there is a $2 economic benefit. At a recent OECD conference, every economist there argued that the single most important investment in long term competitiveness is to invest in early childhood learning.

If we want highly skilled adults with the literacy skills to survive and compete in an increasingly complex global economy, we must begin with a strong start for our children. The Ontario Public School Boards' Association said that investing in our youngest children in the early years represents the most far-reaching responsible investment we can make in Canada's future.

It argues that:

A child's readiness to learn at the start of grade one is the single strongest predictor of how well the child will do in every grade, whether they will graduate successfully, what their earning potential will be, how positive their contribution to society will be and even how healthy they will be.

That is health care costs. Saving government spending, surely that will get the Conservatives' attention. The Alberta's Commission on Learning says that ignoring the early years and focussing on fixing problems when children come to the school is short-sighted and a wrong-headed approach.

There is much to be learned about the importance of early childhood development in determining long term health, well-being, and general adjustment in life, like the research done by the human early learning partnerships in B.C. universities. We have to take advantage of that knowledge, not simply throw a cheque at parents.

Basically, the Conservatives' vision involves minimizing the federal government's involvement in social policy and its commitment to foreign affairs and the armed forces. My vision of Canada differs dramatically from the Conservatives' vision.

I believe the federal government has a fundamental role to play in our country, including a responsibility to protect the equality and social rights of all Canadians, to offer a comparable range of opportunities—which have become anything but equal because of an imperfect market, to ensure that all Canadians have shelter and sufficient income to support their family, and to ensure that they have access to health care and learning opportunities.

The Conservative plan simply does not work. The major flaw in its child care plan, which is not one at all, was summed up on a sign that I saw at a child care rally on the steps of the B.C. legislature in Victoria the day before I introduced this child care bill. It read: “$100 buys a month of child care”. That was in 1986. It seems that the Conservatives are behind the times. The Conservatives own research showed that:

The general consensus was that the $1,200 will not have any real impact on child care choices...While parents may choose how to spend the allowance, it is not sufficient to have an impact upon parents' choices: No one is going to be in a position to go back to work or stay at home to raise children because of the $1,200.

That information cost the government $123,000. I could have told the Conservatives that for a cup of coffee and saved them the time.

Indeed, the Conservatives' plan is taxable. I will call it a scheme. It is taxable, thus negatively affecting many parents' eligibility for the child tax benefit, the GST refund, employment insurance during maternity leave, subsidized housing, et cetera, and for those families who could most use the extra money. The true value of the proposed allowance could be as little a dollar a day per child aged one to six years.

The Conservatives' own research sums it up concluding that “The allowance is not seen as a national child care solution”.

Indeed, the government is now placing radio ads suggesting that parents use the cash to cover babysitting costs. Let us call it what it is, a babysitting bonus, a cynical vote-buying handout. So let us return to the task of building a national child care and early learning system that is universally accessible, affordable, not-for-profit and high quality for our children today, and for generations to come.

With the challenges currently facing our society, child care should not be a luxury. The child care act before us today makes the right of our children to a headstart a universal one. Let us pass this act and as the Ontario Public School Boards' Association puts it: “every child deserves the best possible start”.