Tony Martin

[Supply, June 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely correct. It is not only the proposal put forward by the Conservative Party, but if we go down the road the Liberals suggest, which is to open this to for profit as well as not for profit, we will end up with two tier as well. That is what we are seeing under the stewardship of the government in our health care system, two tier health care.

We have to become very serious about where we want to invest our money if we want the best return for our families, children and communities. If we continue down the road, as suggested by the Conservatives by way of this resolution, that is exactly what we will have. We will have no child care in small, remote, northern and rural communities across the country. The for profit private sector child care will not go where there is no profit to be made.

Therefore, it behooves us all to focus and ensure that whatever child care program we bring in, it is a national program. It will be if we become the government or have greater influence after the next election. We have to ensure that it is truly a national program based on the best research available and on the principles enunciated by the child care community and rooted in legislation and adequately funded.

[Supply, June 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely correct. The economic benefits are overwhelming when we consider them.

Employers increasingly find that the availability of good early childhood programs is critical to the recruitment and retention of parent employees. It is estimated that work/life conflicts cost Canadian organizations roughly $2.7 billion in lost time due to work absences.

There is a $2 return for every dollar invested in early childhood programs in increased tax revenues and decreased social, educational and health costs, not to speak of the contribution that we make to the economy of a community when we pay child care workers adequately.

[Supply, June 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Quebec government is providing 186,000 children with quality child care for $7 a day. That is a truly remarkable investment. We need to commend it for that. I believe it was brought in by the Parti Québécois at the time and Pauline Marois, who is now seeking the leadership of that party. They rooted that. It is a community based, volunteer, not for profit approach.

I would be remiss if I did not give kudos or credit to some degree to the government of the day and to the Minister of Social Development. The first two agreements that he signed with provinces in this evolving national child care program was with Manitoba and Saskatchewan. We were pleased to see in the agreements a commitment to a not for profit delivery mechanism.

Absolutely, Quebec has done some marvellous things and we should find ways to repeat that across the country.

[Supply, June 14th, 2005]

The Conservative member, who I expect wants to get some votes out of Toronto in the next election if he hopes to be the government, has just made a very derogatory remark about Toronto not being very reputable. I am sure he will have a chance later to share with us what he means when he says that Toronto is not very reputable.

The $2,000 tax deduction from the Tory platform, about $600 to $800 per child for a typical family, ignores the reality that paying parents to stay at home is much more expensive. If a large number of parents take up the offer to stay at home, social costs will be astronomical. We would have to pay them at least the rate of maternity and parental benefits, currently 55% of their regular pay up to $413 per week. Those benefits, which now cover the first year of a child's life, cost about $2.7 billion a year. If we were to multiply that by six to cover all preschool years, this would cost more than $16 billion per year. Pretty soon we will be talking real money here for the Conservatives. This is what their proposal could eventually cost the economy of Canada.

Maternity and parental benefits cover only about 60% of all parents with newborns. I would hope that they would want to cover all parents. I do not think they would want to leave out families in Saskatchewan, in northern Ontario or in Prince Edward Island, but to cover all families it would cost $27 billion per year.

We are now talking $27 billion plus $16 billion. Pretty soon, as I said, we will be talking money that will allow people to understand what the real cost of the Conservative program would be.

We are also talking about the loss of billions of dollars in lost production. With the cost of families' lost income it will cost the government substantial amounts of current and future tax revenues. In the long run this would cost the economy about $83 billion per year. Taking the $83 billion per year and adding on to that another $27 billion per year, we are talking $110 billion a year. Add on top of that $16 billion and it is outrageous.

The proposal that the Conservatives are putting forward here today in terms of an alternative to the Liberals' national early childhood learning program, which we are supporting although we do not believe they have spelled it out clearly enough, is outrageous. It is something on which one would have to really think long and hard if we were actually serious about it and wanted to support it, which goes to my critique of everything that they have brought forward today. It is all very simplistic, ideological and has no real depth to it. When we begin to analyze it, as Mr. Krashinsky and Mr. Cleveland did, we begin to see how really out of whack it is and how outrageous and expensive it would be to all of us, to our economy, to our society, to families and to children.

Let us look for a second at the economics of child care, which again I do not think the Conservatives really fully understand because they cannot get out of this ideological box that they are in, which has them wanting us to go back to a Leave It To Beaver time in our history when perhaps families could afford to have a parent at home looking after the children.

What the Conservatives fail to be willing to recognize is that a huge majority of parents have chosen to both work because of the economy and because women in particular have found their way in life to get educated. We as a society have to understand and appreciate the gift that is there and the contribution women can make.

Families are making different choices and in making those choices they want the government to work with them to ensure their children are looked after in a way that reflects the quality they themselves would have given if a different choice had been made.

Let us look at the economics of this issue, which is really not rocket science but actually rather simple. This information is being put out by some reputable economists from, I dare say, Toronto. The economists say that for every $1 spent on child care there is a $2 economic benefit. That means for every dollar we invest in a child's early development, later on, in terms of the child's success in school and then in the workplace, we will see a $2 return on that $1 investment.

The child care community is clearly asking for this. We have to decide whether we want to spend 1% of our GDP on child care, which is not out of whack with what is going on in many places in the world today. We are talking somewhere between $10 billion and $15 billion a year. However on that 1% investment we would get a return of $20 billion to $30 billion down the road. Compare that to the over $100 billion that would be taken out of the economy through the motion proposed by the Conservatives. Two dollars for every $1 invested would increases tax revenues and decrease social, education and health costs.

Charles Coffee, vice-president of the Royal Bank of Canada, said:

A child's brain development in the first six years of life sets the foundation for lifelong learning, behaviour and health. High-quality early childhood education produces long-term positive outcomes and cost-savings that include improved school performance, reduced special education placement, lower school dropout rates, and increased lifelong earning potential.

That was not me talking nor was it the NDP caucus. That was Charles Coffee, vice-president of the Royal Bank, and a very well respected economist. He also said:

Employers increasingly find that the availability of good early childhood programs is critical to the recruitment and retention of parent employees.

It's estimated that work-life conflicts cost Canadian organizations roughly $2.7 billion in lost time due to work absences.

Charles Coffee is a very well respected member of the Order of Canada and does a lot of work in communities across this country.

If some members here have difficulty with Charles Coffee, for whatever reason, then let me tell them what David Dodge, Governor of the Bank of Canada, had to say about this. He said:

While parents, along with some psychologists, sociologists and public health experts, have long intuitively understood the importance of early childhood development, it is really only over the last quarter century or so that scientists, physicians and social scientists have come to recognize the crucial role played by ECD. The literature clearly shows that intervention to improve maternal and infant health, to support parenting, and to provide early childhood education is effective in improving readiness to learn at age six, thus raising the efficiency of primary schooling as a tool of human capital formation.

I think it is clear that if we understand some of the research that has been done on this, if we understand some of the economists and their analysis of what the Conservatives are putting forward, and if we listen to what these economists are saying about the benefit of investing money in early learning and child care, we will see that the country, if it is going to be competitive in the global economy, needs to have a first class national child care program.

We need a first class national child care program that will take root in every province and in every region of the country and one that is based on the best research and is rooted in the principles that the child care community has developed over the last 20 or 30 years in this country, which is quality, universality, developmental and accessibility.

The program, if it is to roll out effectively and if we are to hold whatever government is in place accountable for the expenditure of money required to do that, will need to be framed in legislation. Therefore, we will be pushing the government to move in that direction and we will be critical of it when it does not, which I hope to speak to very briefly this afternoon.

A critique of the Conservative proposal is that it is a bit bogus to pit stay at home parents against a national child care strategy. I do not think there is anyone on any side of the House who does not believe that parents give quality care to their children, and they should be given opportunity to make that choice. However, to pit parents who choose to stay at home against parents who choose to go into the workforce and in doing that their attempt to find quality child care is to be disingenuous if nothing else.

Already we are doing things to recognize the contribution that families make to the upbringing of children. In our tax system there is a spousal exemption. There also is the child care expense deduction which is not for stay at home parents. It is for unregulated child care.

The national child benefit is key. This only goes to working parents. Again, I would invite the Conservatives, if they are really concerned about low and modest income families, to stand up with me and demand the government in Ottawa and the provincial governments stop the clawback of the national child tax benefit supplement.

This is a program of significant money, over $1,000 per child, that is supposed to go to the most at risk and vulnerable of our children. However, because parents are not participating in the workforce, that money is clawed back. Therefore, money that could have gone to helping parents in the low and modest income levels who choose to stay home and look after the children is being clawed back by the government.

If the Conservatives are truly sincere and interested in doing something for modest and low income families in the interest of looking after children and reducing child poverty, which a national child care program will go a long way to doing as well, they should stand with me and join the fight to stop the clawback of the national child tax benefit.

There are a number of things that are being done to improve the lot of families and parents who choose to stay home. We can always do more. We can increase the national child tax benefit. We can find ways to support families who make those choices, but not at the cost and expense of putting in place a national child care program and funding it so it works. We should be enhancing all those supports for families and children.

What should Liberals do to confront this very real challenge? What should they do to confront the challenge that has been put before them by the Conservatives, the child care community and ourselves? They should move away more aggressively than they are at the moment and truly put in place a national program.

I asked the minister earlier what defined a national program for him and he had no answer. If one wants to look at it, he has a series of bilateral agreements now. He has $5 billion in a budget that is yet to be passed. He is working with us as New Democrats to see if we cannot get that money through the system and to the provinces that need it.

However, the kind of hesitancy or lack of confidence that we see in the government and in the minister and his staff indicates that something is lacking in the commitment to truly impose and provide a national child care program.

We want a national child care program that is based on the best research. We want a national child care program that is rooted in legislation and that is adequately funded. Anything short of that just will not cut it. It will not provide the kind of program that we know is possible, particularly when we look at what we have done with health care and education.

[Supply, June 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to the opportunity today to put a few thoughts again on the record with regard to a national child care program and to say at the outset that we in the New Democratic Party disagree profoundly with the motion put forward today by the Conservatives.

We have been clear from the very beginning that we need a national child care program that is worth its salt and that actually will deliver on the principles that so many people have worked on based on research from many jurisdictions in the world. We need a national child care program that will provide a quality product for which we can all be proud and one we will speak to in the same tone as we speak today as Canadians to our health care system and our education system.

However we need to dissect the very simple approach offered by the Conservative Party in the previous federal election and over the last year, and in fact coming to the House for the second time in a matter of a month for debate.

The Conservatives' program of tax deductions for parents and their suggestion that it would somehow provide choice is actually the opposite of what would happen. Their program would not produce choice. It would limit choice. All of the experts, if we believe the experts, the research and the experience in Quebec, say that simply giving tax deductions to families does not create one new child care space. If we do not produce child care spaces, then the families in rural parts of the country, in small communities and in remote parts of the country, have no possibility of experiencing quality child care and quality early development for their children.

What the Conservatives are proposing today by way of this motion is to actually pay parents to stay home. We know that parents are already making choices and they want the government to support them in their choices. They want the opportunity to put their children in quality, safe, developmental child care spaces so they can be secure in the fact that they are taking advantage of every possibility to have their children grow, develop and become contributing citizens.

The motion today is a scheme to pay parents to stay at home but it will not create choice.

The program put forward by the government in consultation with provincial premiers goes a lot further to actually achieving a national child care program than what we are addressing here today but it does have some serious flaws. We question the government's commitment to really putting in place a program that lives up to its definition of national.

For the moment I want to focus for a second on the offering of the Conservatives. They have asked the government to cost out its program, and I agree with that. The government should be willing to tell us what it will cost and where the money will come from and it should be willing to put in place a mechanism of accountability on this. However the Conservatives did not do any analysis at all of their own proposal.

I know the figures I put forward here this afternoon will be a bit out there in terms of the extreme case scenario if what the Conservatives propose actually happens, but nevertheless we have to think about that and we have to understand how that might play out.

The idea of paying stay at home parents, at the centre of the Conservative child care policy, was recently trashed by two reputable University of Toronto economists, Gordon Cleveland and Michael Krashinsky.

[Supply, June 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the child care program in Quebec is certainly the one that everyone is focused on at the moment. As she said, it is quite expensive, but if we are going to have good child care there is a cost. As many economists have said recently, for every $1 invested in early childhood development, we get $2 in return later on down the road.

I want to raise an issue that is at the forefront in Quebec at the moment and ask her what thoughts she might have on it. It concerns the program in Quebec that is delivering care to 186,000 children at $7 a day. The province has now cut $40 million from that budget. Those of us who have been looking at child care and understand the research know that quality in child care comes with paying our workers well. There is the issue of pay equity and it is causing some labour strife in Quebec.

I am wondering what comments the member might have about that and how that plays out in terms of the high quality of child care that now exists in that province.

[Supply, June 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, everybody in the House knows that we in the NDP are committed to a national child care program rooted in principles and legislation, with sufficient funds to make sure that everybody across this country can access it.

When we look at what is happening out there at this point, with some money rolled out and a number of bilateral agreements, it makes this program a national program. What research is the minister using to support his insistence on it being open to both for profit and not for profit delivery systems? When can we see legislation tabled in the House to frame this important new national program?

[Supply Management, June 7th, 2005]

Madam Chair, I am disappointed in the way the government has come forward tonight with no real clear indication that it is actually going to do anything. The minister just wrapped this up as if it was not really important.

We are here today because of what the member for Timmins—James Bay has coined a “political walk away” from rural Canada. In the May 2 edition of The Hill Times he stated:

For the last dozen or so years, farmers have been left on their own to compete and to cope in the face of increasingly growing international and domestic obstacles. Farmers have adapted. They've grown more efficient, and have moved towards increasing economies of scale. The fact is, they've hit the wall and there just doesn't seem to be any political inclination on the part of the ruling Liberals to find a new way forward.

[Supply Management, June 7th, 2005]

Madam Chair, that is a good question and I guess the same question could be asked of the Conservatives. When they had a chance in committee to actually bring something forward for agriculture as they debated the budget, they did not get around to that either.

I am here tonight saying to the government that it needs to take action. It needs to stand shoulder to shoulder with the farmers of this country in one of their more difficult times and to understand that talk is cheap. We need to act.

[Supply Management, June 7th, 2005]

I have a passion about this issue, Madam Chair, and I know that the farmers who are here and the farmers in my own constituency want me to speak for them, through you, Madam Chair, to this government and tell them to stand up and be counted on this issue. Do not drop the ball, because there is too much at stake.

We know when the Liberals were looking for power on the hustings they made all kinds of promises on all kinds of fronts. In their Speech from the Throne there was a lot of stuff that all of a sudden was missing, but particularly when they came down with the budget there was nothing there.

I hear the Conservatives yapping off here to my right. When the first budget came down there was not a thing in it for agriculture. What did we hear from the farmers in the Conservative caucus? What did we hear from the Conservative caucus? They said they supported the budget. When it came to a vote on the budget, where were they? They were sitting on their hands. Then when the budget was voted on, they voted for it in principle.

Talk about talking out of both sides of one's mouth. There is no room here for the high ground, either with the government or with the Conservatives.

What the farmers are looking for tonight is someone to stand up and say, “We will be with you; we will be there fighting for you. We will put it all out there on the floor. We will take the risk. We will invoke article XXVIII.” We know and the farmers know other countries have done so. Other countries have invoked article XXVIII, and they did not suffer any penalty from the WTO or other countries. No. They were seen to be speaking from a position of strength.

That is what the farmers want. They want their government to stand with them and speak from a position of strength in front of these countries that want to take away our share of the market, and to act in a manner that bespeaks the history and the track record of the country, as we have gone to war year after year over in Europe with those same countries, to protect their interests and their freedom. They want their government to go to war with them to protect their industry, their interest in their industry, their future, and what they have given their lifeblood to build up, their farms for their families, and that is not happening. That is really sad, because the farmers had bigger expectations from the government in that.

The European Union used article XXVIII to stem the imports of wheat and barley. The United States invoked article XXVIII against Canadian wheat. Russia and Vietnam have stood up for their domestic markets. The U.S. is now moving against modified milk products, and the list goes on and on. Other countries stood shoulder to shoulder with our farmers to protect their interests against outside countries that want to come in and take a whole lot of our market.

This is I think the fifth time I have stood in the House to speak in a debate on agriculture in the last nine months. That is because of the importance of farming to my constituency.

I sat down with one of my farmers the other day, and he shared with me that the impact of this ruling by the WTO going through is very significant for him and for his neighbours. I think he was talking about an impact of some $35,000 of equity, a significant reduction in his market share.

An economic impact study was done on the importance of farming in the Algoma-Manitoulin region. In April 2004, agri-related sales were $86.2 million, with total jobs of 2,827. That is like another Algoma Steel.

If Algoma Steel was threatened in Sault Ste. Marie, we would all be up in arms. The provincial government would be up in arms, the federal government would be up in arms, and the city would be up in arms. We would be going to war to protect Algoma Steel.

But for our farmers, there are 2,827 jobs, which is similar to Algoma Steel, and the government is up against it. The WTO makes a ruling. The government could invoke article XXVIII, and what does it do? Nothing. It is silent on the issue. It is silent on an industry that has as much impact on my area as the closing of Algoma Steel would have if the government does not do something.

I tell the House the farmers are being hammered by BSE and the result of that, the closing of the border, and now they are being hammered by this WTO ruling. They are very disappointed that the government is not doing anything.

On the one hand I suppose we can be grateful for this take note debate and the prominence given to agriculture and our farmers and to their important issues such as supply management. On the other hand it begs the question of why there are so many debates and why so little action.

If we are to have yet another take note debate on agriculture, the question is, is anyone taking note? Is anyone noticing the real live impact on the farmers at home in their ridings of actions such as this and the inaction of the government?