Ken Dryden

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2005]

Mr. Chair, the hon. member has talked about his short experience within the House. One of the things that is so remarkable about that same short experience in the House is how somebody in the House is able, apparently, to say whatever it is he says one has said even if one did not say it. If they repeat it with words which suggest that kind of outrage, in fact, somehow it is as if one has said it. Of course it was never said. It was never said and never will be said because it is not believed.

Again, all one can say is that if the hon. member had been here earlier he would have heard how in fact, as all of us know, that central relationship, the central source of development and learning in any child's life, is that with the parent. The question is in terms of today's life where in fact the great majority of parents are both in the workplace and have their children in care of some form or another. The question is, what kind of care? What are the options? What are the choices?

What is offered by our program of $5 billion over five years on the way to the creation of a system is something that is of higher quality than the kind of day care that is offered in general now. There are a lot of good places, but in general the intent is to raise the level of that system and raise the level of the experience of those children.

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2005]

Mr. Chair, all the people the hon. member mentioned still have all of those options. One of the options that they do not have very much of now, which is the real shame of it, is regulated care. They do not have the option of high quality care. They do not have the option of inclusive care. They do not have nearly to the extent they would like the availability of affordable care.

What we are looking to do is provide real choice, real choice where somebody can decide on the forms of child care that the hon. member is suggesting. That is absolutely fine. The parents can still do that. What we are looking to do is also offer them the possibility of something which is that much more developmental, of that much higher a quality and that much more affordable.

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2005]

Mr. Chair, most of the question that was asked has been answered several times earlier in the evening for others who were here. The point is just wrong. One need only to have been present for the child care announcement in Regina to see the reaction of those in the room and to see the reaction of the minister and the premier and hear them talk about how important all of this will be to early learning and child care in the province.

I do not know the exact numbers in terms of what the money will represent to Saskatchewan, but it will mean something close to double what it is they spend up to now in terms of early learning and child care. It will be pretty much doubling what they do right now. That is the kind of possibility and impact that this will have for the whole province of Saskatchewan.

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2005]

First of all, Mr. Chair, that is incorrect. As recently as about two weeks ago we made our announcement in Newfoundland. We made it outside Gander in the village of Glenwood, which has a child care centre.

This whole program is focused on providing service and possibility for children wherever they reside. It means that in smaller places it is more of a challenge, but just as with education, one does not stop attempting to meet that challenge. One works that much harder to try to provide the answer for rural communities as well as urban communities.

There has never been an approach that is particularly urban about this. There has not been and there will not be. This is an early learning and child care system for across the country. “Across the country” means big places and it means small places.

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2005]

Mr. Chair, I would like to thank the hon. member very much for laying out the circumstances and challenges so well. I know this particular area of persons with disabilities is a priority for him from the work he did formerly as the mayor of Thunder Bay and the work he continues to do in the House.

About 20 years ago the effect of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to a great extent was to remind us of the rights of everybody and to also remind us of those who are discriminated against. Twenty years ago and more, most people with disabilities lived out of sight and out of mind. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms helped to move people from out of mind to in mind. What we need to do is to move people with disabilities from back of mind to front of mind in all of the things we do.

The first step is to build on strong foundations. It will mean working closely, as the hon. member mentioned, with provincial and territorial partners and focusing our existing federal-provincial-territorial processes and relations on developing key elements of that 10 year action plan. It will mean making even stronger links with people in the disabled community and making them real partners in developing a plan.

We will also work to address what is generally recognized as a very serious deficiency, the lack of widespread access to technical aids and devices, personal assistive services and other such supports.

It will be critical to explore innovative improvements to the employment and income situation of persons with disabilities, particularly with regard to developing corporate employer strategies. It will be important to make it clear that disability is a core social issue which plays out on so many policy fronts: poverty, employment, learning, housing and transportation, to name just a few. As a consequence it means making disability a Government of Canada issue, one which all federal departments and agencies make a core priority.

I am also committed to work with my colleagues to establish the Government of Canada more and more as a model employer for persons with disabilities and in helping to ensure that high quality service is provided to persons with disabilities.

It is essential that we move forward on developing a broader and deeper public understanding of the growing significance and relevance of disability issues to all Canadians.

We as a country must be prepared to address the looming demographic reality of an aging population. Science and medicine are making it possible for more and more people of all ages to live longer with a disability and to live more productively, rewardingly, satisfyingly and inclusively with that disability.

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2005]

Mr. Chair, those are things that we will have to check for the member. We do not have the answers for him. We are not sure whether there are answers to the questions, but we will look to see if we can find those answers.

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2005]

Mr. Chair, the way that talks have progressed with the provinces indicates a great similarity from one agreement to the other. Maybe 80%, maybe 90%, is the same from one province to another and then there are some differences in the rest of the agreements.

What I would have in mind for a national system is not unlike education. Education is a provincial jurisdiction and it is something that is framed. The authority for it is within the province. At the same time there are similarities across the country. There are certain expectations of an education system whether one is from B.C., P.E.I. or Newfoundland and Labrador. Even though there are differences, and those that would be in each system would see what those differences are and focus on those differences, someone from the outside looking in would see far more similarities than they would see differences.

That is likely the way in which early learning and child care will develop. There will be provincial differences and territorial differences, but there will be a common kind of understanding of what good regulated early learning and child care will look like across the country.

In terms of the math that he did and so on, as I mentioned before in terms of choices, every program that is presented is a choice. It is a choice in one direction and it is not quite a choice in some other direction. What the math revealed was that a $2,000 tax deduction was not a child care choice. It was lots of other things but not a choice. It was a choice as a tax deduction. It offered a benefit as a tax deduction.

As a child care benefit, it was not. If it were, then of course all of those things that the member talked about would follow. If it were a serious child care proposal, then the behaviour would be this and that and all of those things that he said that would affect the economy. It would affect all of these other things and would end up with the kinds of costs that he talked about.

However, it was not a serious child care proposal and it would not be acted upon seriously by parents. Therefore, it would not have the kind of implications that the member talked about.

In terms of the economics of child care and the comments of Charles Coffey and David Dodge, it is something that we have known all along. During all those years, 20 or 30 years ago, we talked about how important the formative years were for a child. We talked about how important the experience of entering school was for a child. We talked about how important it was in terms of the economic status and circumstances of a family, and what was available within that home for that child. What is all that saying to a great extent? It is about the learning environment and the development environment. It is about the interactions that take place during that time, whether they are stimulating or whether they are not stimulating.

Those are the things that we have always known. The challenge we face when our lives change, when the way in which our society changes, and the way in which we live changes, is how do we end up replicating as best as we can that kind of experience that we know is so important for the development of a child?

Our challenge is to create the right environment for those kids. How do we meet it now given that our life circumstances are different?

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2005]

Mr. Chair, in fairness to the question, and it is a good question, I think there is also some fairness to the answer, which is that it is a big challenge, just as one would imagine a big challenge if we filled in the blank, instead of a child care centre, we filled it with an elementary school. That is not part of what our expectation is for an elementary school or a high school, that it is available at whatever the hours that are convenient insofar as the way in which parents live.

Now, as I said earlier, the good news in this is that the larger scale systems and institutions are that much less flexible. The smaller scale like this has a much greater chance at flexibility and of adapting much more quickly to the kinds of needs the member suggests.

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2005]

Mr. Chair, as the hon. member mentioned and as we have talked about before, each province will work out its own priorities in that particular way.

Clearly shift work and the kind of circumstances that the member is describing are much more of a fact of life now than they might have been 10 or 20 years ago.

Once again, I go back to what I was saying before about the flexibility that is inherent in a system that has a number of parts that are of much smaller scale.

I would imagine that while the great majority of child care centres, at least in the foreseeable years, will not be able to provide a lot of what the member is talking about in terms of shift hours assistance or on Sundays but I suspect that some would. I suspect that would be their approach, their way of filling a need within a particular community, and it would be their way of making their application to the provincial government successful.

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2005]

Mr. Chair, as I said earlier in the evening, one of the great advantages of early learning and child care is its scale. It is a lot smaller than a school system. Given that it is a lot smaller in scale, it is something that can work with fewer kids. It is something that can work with less of an infrastructure which will result in less cost to that kind of infrastructure. It allows for all kinds of possibilities in the way in which the hon. member suggests; for various different linguistic communities and cultural communities. There are many early learning and child care centres now that are specifically for what the hon. member talks about and surely there will be many more in the future.