moved that Bill C-420, An Act to establish the Office of the Commissioner for Children and Young Persons in Canada, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Mr. Speaker, I have been waiting for this moment for a very long time, and I believe most Canadians have been waiting for this moment for a long time as well, the opportunity for Parliament to debate and eventually vote for the creation of a national commissioner for children and young persons.
I say a long time because it was more than 20 years ago that Canada ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and yet to this date we have not made the decision to create the position of a national commissioner, one of whose tasks would be to monitor our compliance with our obligations under the convention.
The fact that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most ratified UN convention ever, over 190 countries, tells us something important. It tells us that virtually all of humanity recognizes the fundamental importance that we must accord our children, our voiceless children.
I admit from the outset that my own party, which was in power for 13 of the past 20 years, did not take the opportunity to create an office of the commissioner for children and young persons. Although many Liberals, including Senator Landon Pearson, who worked very hard on this issue, dreamed of creating such an office, it did not come to fruition, and the Liberal Party has to take responsibility for that.
There is no room for partisanship today, especially when we are talking about something as important as our children.
I will read a few excerpts from the preamble to Bill C-420:
...the true measure of a nation’s standing is how well it attends to its children, including their health, safety, material security, education and socialization, as well as their sense of being loved, valued, and included in the families and societies into which they are born;
The second excerpt:
...Canada, by ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, recognizes the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for his or her physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development;
Finally, the third excerpt:
...Canada, by ratifying that Convention, recognizes the right of every child to have his or her best interests be given primary consideration in all actions concerning him or her;
I do not believe that a single one of us present in the House today would disagree with any of the words I have just quoted from the bill's preamble. Many of us are parents of children and whether a parent or not, all of us want the best for our Canadian children and indeed for every child on this planet. All of us recognize intrinsically that children enter this world completely helpless and that it is the responsibility, not only of parents but also of the nation, to ensure that we attend to their needs, including their health, safety, material security, education and socialization, as well as their sense of being loved, valued and included in the families and societies in which they are born.
While all of us are torn by the heart-wrenching sight of a malnourished child in the Sahel region of Africa, or by the sight of children begging for food in the street rather than attending school, or indeed by the sight of young children working in atrocious conditions in a factory or a mine, we take comfort in the thought that in Canada we have taken measures to prevent this kind of thing from happening.
Yet we know that all is not perfect within our own country and that children's rights are also not always protected or taken into consideration. While successive Conservative and Liberal governments have brought in measures that were clearly focused on our children and young people, and this is commendable, we also know that we must continue to be extremely vigilant when it comes to our children and their basic rights.
Parents obviously have a fundamental responsibility for their children, but so does the state. It is the state that makes the laws of the country that affect all of us, including our children and what happens to them. It is the state that provides the infrastructure of schools for education and hospitals for health care, as well as many other institutions that touch the lives of our children. It is the state that decides what minimum social safety net we will put in place to ensure that nobody falls between the cracks through no fault of their own.
We have all recoiled with horror at what we, as a country, did to our aboriginal children by transferring them into the residential school system. We are all disgusted when we hear the stories of sexual abuse of children by adults in many schools, horrific stories that have been coming to the surface in the past few decades. How could this happen in Canada?
While these are dramatic examples of what can happen to our defenceless children, we also know that child poverty is a reality in our country, that children go to school hungry, that they sometimes go to bed hungry, that they sometimes live in poor housing conditions, that they are not provided with the adequate educational resources that they need, that they suffer from mental health problems and that they are exposed to bullying and so on.
Let me say this loud and clear. I am not standing here today pointing the finger at any party, any organization or any person. We all bear collective responsibility for the well-being of our children. Just as we can be proud of some of the measures that we have implemented to ensure their well-being, we must also concede that no party has a perfect record and that much work still has to be done.
Of course, the scandalous living conditions of some Canadian children can be seen on the evening news. We all know that some children go to school without having eaten a nutritious breakfast. These examples are striking, but they are not our only concerns as federal legislators.
For example, when a couple divorces and the family includes children, federal family law determines the fate of those children to some extent. This legislation obviously must take into consideration the well-being of these children. When a young offender commits a very serious crime and he is under 18, the justice system treats him differently than it would an adult and for good reason. Again, federal legislation could determine what will happen. In all of this there is, of course, the matter of federal or provincial jurisdictions.
Today I am speaking in favour of creating a federal office of the commissioner for children and young persons, recognizing at the same time that there are organizations at the provincial level that have responsibilities toward children. One might wonder whether it is necessary to have a federal commissioner when the provinces have equivalent positions. The answer is yes.
First of all, these provincial equivalents—let us call them children's ombudsmen or advocates—agree that it is important to have a federal commissioner so that there is a federal-provincial exchange that will make it possible to initiate a national dialogue on children and to identify existing gaps. The provincial and federal jurisdictions do not meet all of the needs of our children. Our children have needs that fall through the cracks between the federal and provincial jurisdictions.
A motion to eliminate child poverty by 2000 was adopted in the House 23 years ago by all the parties. We made this promise for good reasons, but we did not keep it. The other priorities of the day distracted us from our goal and, with time, the promise was lost among those other priorities.
Child poverty still exists today. The rate of child poverty is approximately 13% and, if I were to ask my colleagues whether we should give priority to reducing that rate—a rate that is much too high in a country like Canada—I am sure that they would all say yes. But things have a tendency to be forgotten with time when other crises arise. That is why we need a commissioner for children and young persons who would report to Parliament and Canadians on a yearly basis.
We need a permanent national commissioner because we can easily forget the promises that we made to ourselves with respect to our children, for example, the promise the parties made unanimously 23 years ago to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000. A commissioner would be there to remind us because every one of us needs to be reminded from time to time that we have work to do here or there with respect to the obligations that we undertook toward our children and young people and, yes, a commissioner would also tell us when we are doing a good job at satisfying those obligations.
I would like to briefly summarize the mandate that a commissioner for children and young persons would be given.
The commissioner would be there to advocate at a national level for the needs, views and rights of children and young persons; to implement programs to inform the public of his role; to monitor the development and application of laws affecting children and young persons; to monitor the implementation of Canada's obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child; to assess the impact of our legislation on the rights of children and young persons; to maintain close liaison with similar bodies or authorities in the provinces; to encourage consultation with children and young persons and with organizations and service providers that have a mandate to protect their rights; and to carry out studies on the rights of children at the request of the Minister of Justice or a committee of the Senate or the House of Commons.
I speak today in the spirit of trying to do what is best for our children. This is not a partisan issue. It is an issue that is focused squarely on the children of Canada.
It is also a smart thing for the government to do. It is particularly smart economically speaking. We all know that children represent the future of our country and that it is in our utmost interest to get them off to a good start in life so they can be productive members of society. Putting it bluntly, they are an incredibly important resource.
With the aging baby boomer demographic approaching retirement, we will be placing a greater onus on our children to support us. We need to ensure that they grow up healthy, in safe conditions, with a good education and within a well-balanced social environment. We need to provide the less fortunate ones with extra help to ensure they are also able to achieve their potential. When children's needs are not addressed, whether it be their nutrition, living conditions, health needs and so on, we end up with more children who get in trouble with the law, suffer mental problems or cannot maintain long-term jobs.
I ask my fellow members in the House of Commons, regardless of party affiliation, to support the creation of a commissioner for children and young persons. It is the smart thing to do. It is the right thing to do. It is in our vital interest to do so as a country. It is in the vital interests of our children and young persons.