House of Commons photoWon her last election, in 2019, with 47% of the vote.
Older Workers May 5th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, I was very pleased yesterday when the Prime Minister announced in the House, “In the budget there is a fund related to the forest industry of about $100 million for this year to help older workers. We are examining our options”.
I am pleased to say he also announced that during the budget we will be conducting a feasibility study on this very issue. I look forward to the hon. member's participation in that process.
Business of Supply May 4th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, I am surprised the hon. member for Trinity—Spadina would be arguing about us giving parents more money. This is something for which she has advocated for a long time, and that is what we are doing.
Historically, parents have not been given money for child care, not one cent. We are offering $1,200. That is the choice the hon. member has and will have when this comes to a vote. She can support $1,200 a year for each child or she can vote against it and vote for giving them nothing. That is the choice: $1,200 a year or nothing.
I hope, for the sake of parents and children across this country, that she chooses $1,200.
Business of Supply May 4th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, in many ways our children are our greatest natural resource.
Our program is designed to provide three things: support, choice and spaces. It is not the role of the federal government, constitutionally, to provide 100% child care.
We believe that our role is to provide the parents with the support they need to get the choice that meets their needs, the choice in child care, and we will do that in two ways. One way is through a $1,200 a year universal child care allowance for parents of every child under the age of six. That will help them with affordability to access programming.
As Leslie Wilson, who is the vice-president of the large Canadian day care program, Wee Watch, said the affordability of licensed care has always been a sticking point. For parents currently planning day care for their children, that $1,200 appears to be bridging the gap between the cost of our services compared to unregulated care.
We are talking about spending more than twice as much on our child care program than any previous government has even promised, much less delivered. There is a lot more money going into the system. That money will be there to support the choices parents make. Whether it is formal day care or stay at home, the money will be in the system to make it happen.
Business of Supply May 4th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, I am honoured today to be splitting my time with the member for Prince Edward—Hastings.
I am very pleased to respond to the motion of the hon. member for St. Paul's. On January 23 of this year, Canadians chose a platform that puts choice in child care as a top priority. We promised, Canadians voted and now we are delivering.
On Tuesday, the Minister of Finance tabled a budget that commits this government to a new vision in child care, a new universal child care plan that provides benefits directly to families and supports the creation of new child care spaces. Both of these components, benefits to families and new child care spaces, work in tandem, and behind both components of the plan lies one unifying vision. That vision is to give flexibility so that parents and communities can create the solutions that work best for them.
With the support of the House, we will create a new universal child care benefit in time to have cheques in the mail to parents this July. The cheques will provide $100 a month for each child under the age of six. This will put $2.5 billion per year directly into the hands of parents. It will provide direct federal support to 1.6 million families and more than 2 million children.
The essence of our vision is that these cheques will give parents flexibility. They will put the universal child care benefit to work where it makes the most sense for them. For some parents it might go toward the cost of formal day care. Other families might use the money to help pay for different kinds of care, with neighbours or family members, for example. Still other families might choose to have a parent stay at home to raise the children. For these parents, as with parents who work outside the home, the benefit provides choice.
Parents may use it to purchase children's books or educational toys. They may use it to purchase educational software or a trip to the local museum. They might even use it to attend a mom and tot program at the local library or community centre. Different families will put the benefit to use in different ways to help their children. That is how it should be.
The day following the budget, for example, the Globe and Mail carried a story about a young single mother in Halifax who has a job as a cashier at Tim Hortons and she earns, as one would expect, a modest income. She has to manage her family finances very carefully. What has she decided to do with the benefit? She is going to invest it in an RESP so that her four year old son will be able to pursue post-secondary education when he is ready for it. This is an investment that she would not have been able to make until now.
This is the kind of choice that individual Canadians make when given the flexibility to put the benefit where it makes the most sense for them. However I want to emphasize that the universal child care benefit is only one of the two components of our universal child care plan. We know that many parents want formal day care. We know also that child care spaces are difficult to find in some communities. We also know that the demand exceeds the current supply. That is why we will be creating new child care spaces.
Tuesday's budget set aside $250 million a year for each of five years beginning next year to support the creation of new, real child care spaces. In fact, we will create up to 250,000 child care spaces each year. Once again, our vision is different. Our vision is to encourage flexibility and innovation. Some parents work shift work. Some must work very long hours at key times of the year. Some have a long commute and cannot make it back to their care centre by the time it closes at five o'clock. Some need to drop their kids off for only a few days a week. There are not very many formal day cares that can accommodate all these variations, so we are creating a child care spaces initiative that will help create spaces that are designed with real life situations in mind, the working realities of parents in communities across Canada.
We want community associations, non-profit organizations and businesses, both large and small, to come up with ideas for child care spaces that make sense for them. We will also include parents as they, believe it or not, are the true experts.
We can see many examples already of innovative ideas in creating child care spaces. In Toronto, for example, a former tin factory on the corner of Spadina and Richmond was converted into a commercial and cultural centre. The developers worked with the Canadian Mothercraft Society to set up an innovative child care centre in the workplace that supports the architects, visual artists, filmmakers, performers and scientists who are tenants of the building. Not only does it offer child care, it also provides a very stimulating environment for children to learn about culture.
These are the kinds of results that we can achieve when people are given the opportunity to innovate, to be flexible and to choose. They are the kinds of results that we will look for when we invite various partners, who have a keen interest in child care issues, to come together to create solutions for their communities.
Over the coming months we will consult with the provinces, territories, employers, non-profit organizations and parents on ways to implement our spaces initiative. We expect to have the results of these consultations late this fall and specific commitments for the initiative will be ready for next year's budget. Very soon we will see the creation of new child care spaces across Canada.
There are two elements of our universal child care plan. They represent a fresh vision of child care, one that encourages flexibility, innovation and, most important, choice. Perhaps most of all our plan is one of our top five priorities. It is not one of 30 or 40 or 50 priorities, which would mean that it is not a priority at all, as we have seen with the previous government at any time. Ours is one of our top five.
Canadian families now have the hope that they will see real action, real child care spaces, real money in their pockets to help with their children and real choice. We will act on our five priorities. We will act on our universal child care plan. Canadians will soon see the benefits of these results. That is why I believe our universal child care plan is such a good one for parents and children right across the country and that is why I urge the hon. members in the House to vote against this motion.
Older Workers May 4th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, I believe that we owe it to Canadians to be careful with every single dollar that we spend, and we will do that. We will not go extending programs because we have not bothered to take the time to make an informed rational decision.
That is why I have been trying to make arrangements with my colleagues in this House who have a concern on this issue. Unfortunately, their schedules have not allowed it yet. We are trying to meet next week to deal with this together, so that we can come up with a solution that would actually work for the workers and for Canadians across the country.
Older Workers May 4th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, just to repeat in case the sound system is not working, we do want to help these people. We do want to do it in consultation to get the benefit of the years of experience and wisdom of hon. members like the one who just posed the questions.
That is why I have invited him to participate in this process and to do a feasibility study. I have also invited him to participate in assessing the five weeks program because we need his input. We want it.
Older Workers May 4th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, as the Prime Minister indicated, we do recognize the challenges faced by older workers, particularly in communities that are depending upon single industries. That is why the Prime Minister has committed to making this work.
We are going to be doing a feasibility study. I look forward to the participation of the opposition members in that process.
Child Care May 4th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, the facts are that our plans for the universal child care benefit have been endorsed by many in communities right across the country.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has said that the one group that will benefit immensely from this budget is Canadian households with young children. Economically they will rocket ahead, thanks to the government's fulfillment of its promise to provide all families with $100 a month for each child under the age of six.
That is a strong endorsement.
Child Care May 4th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, there are people out there who would like the government to pay for everything for them.
What we are trying to do is provide parents with young children, who are at their lowest earning years and who have high expenses, with the resources to access the choice in child care that suits their needs. We are also trying to make sure that they have 125,000 new spaces from which to choose when they are making that decision.
Child Care May 3rd, 2006
Mr. Speaker, once again the Liberal Party's true agenda on child care is being exposed which is that it believes that parents are unfit to raise their own children.
The Conservative Party believes in parents. We believe that parents will make the right decisions for their children and for their very unique family circumstances.