40th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION
EDITED HANSARD • NUMBER 050
CONTENTS
Monday, May 4, 2009
Child Care

Mr. Michael Savage (Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, Lib.):

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to follow up a question that I asked back before Christmas. The occasion was the third anniversary of the cancelling of the child care agreements, which had been signed by the member for York Centre and the provinces and territories around the country. Because the three year funding had been phased out, the city of Toronto announced that 6,000 spaces would be gone as a result of that cancellation.

The point is that Canada is failing on child care. It is failing its citizenry and it is particularly failing its children. In a report released in December, Canada ranked last out of 25 OECD nations on 10 key benchmarks. Those benchmarks were further to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Canada is failing on the benchmarks of early learning and child care.

In 2004-05 we had a brief hope when the Liberal government, under Paul Martin, brought in these chid care agreements and the member for York Centre signed them. That was dashed when the Conservative government came forward in 2006. It cancelled those agreements and replaced them with the universal child care benefit of $100 a month. Everybody can use $100 a month. There is no question about that.

However, I want to refer to a book that I picked up last week called Beyond Child's Play, when I met with some child care advocates in Vancouver on Friday.

Speaking to the universal child care benefit, in a wonderful article by Jody Dallaire and Lynell Anderson, they said:
While families need adequate incomes, they also need services to be available and affordable in their communities. The UCCB does not build or sustain child care services.

That is very true. Nobody would argue that many families need $100 a month, but it is a fallacy and a fraud to suggest that this is child care. It is not. We need a system in our country. Maybe some people would say that it is too expensive to have a system in Canada. I would like to quote from the same article again. It says:
Some say that, in uncertain times, Canada cannot afford to invest in child care. We say, nothing could be further from the truth. Child care services are an essential part of every community's economic and social infrastructure—an economic stimulus with long-term benefits for Canada.

There is no question among people who know what is happening in child care in our country that we need to have a system. We need to build a system. There are countries in the OECD that have a system. In Canada people like Monica Lysack, Jody Dallaire, Martha Friendly and many others understand this and are trying to get this message across.

What kind of an outcry would there be in any community if an eight-year-old boy or girl was refused entry into elementary school? It would be on the front page of the local paper. However, every day in every community in Canada, children cannot get early learning and child care. Why does Canada have very high rates of illiteracy for a country as wealthy as it is? We are not maximizing the human potential of all children. We need to do that.

I would like to close with another quotation from an article by Martha Friendly. She said:
While many would say that a recession is not the time to be putting forward demands for a new social program, others would follow Barack Obama's lead to argue that the choice between “getting our economy moving now and rebuilding it over the long term” is a false choice—that leaders need to be able to walk and chew gum by ensuring that the demonstrated potential for early childhood education and care to contribute to a prosperous Canada is realized.

The government does not realize it, but the time will come when a more enlightened government comes into this place and makes early learning and child care a reality for Canadian families.

Mr. Ed Komarnicki (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, that member was part of the previous Liberal government that made many promises with respect to the national child care program. In 13 years, how many spaces did it create? It created none. The Liberals are long on promises but short on action.

Our government has made promises and has delivered. Support for families with children is one of our most important goals. Our government is committed to helping parents by providing them with real choices in deciding what is best for their children. Our government's approach is not very popular with the opposition but it is very popular with Canadian parents.

We provide choice and direct support to parents through the universal child care benefit. This provides $100 per month to parents for each child under six. That is $1,200 per child and that money helps families. When I stopped by a small coffee shop and asked the moms how many children they have under six, I found that in that little group of people in the coffee shop in that little community they receive $9,000-plus.

The universal child care benefit has lifted about 24,000 families with about 55,000 children out of low income and it provides more than $2.4 billion each year to 1.5 million families with 2 million young children. That is a significant number of people who are affected.

Due to the support of this government, the provinces and territories have announced the creation of over 60,000 new child care spaces since March 2007.

Last year, this government invested $5.6 billion in early learning and child care. That was the single largest investment in child care in the history of Canada, three times more than the previous Liberal government ever invested, and that support is going up. For the next fiscal year, all provinces and territories will receive an increase of 3% in funding under the Canada social transfer. However, we will not do what the hon. member's party did, which was to balance its books on the backs of vulnerable Canadians by cutting $25 billion in social transfers.

In budget 2009, our economic action plan provides tax relief for low to middle income Canadians. The plan increases child benefits for modest and middle income Canadian families under the national child benefit supplement and the Canada child tax benefit, something most parties agree is of significant help.

The budget also announced the creation of an expert panel to review EI maternity and parental benefits for self-employed Canadians to help those Canadians at the beginning of their children's lives.

The fact is that the Liberals promised a national child care program every year since 1993 and did not create a single space, no spaces at all during that period of time. This is not a credible record and all Canadians recognize that.

This government believes that parents know best how to raise their children. We support choice in child care. We support Canadian parents and we will continue to work to ensure that the broadest range of choices are available to all Canadian families.

In fact, our government was chosen in two elections in a row. Canadians chose this government's plan because it puts the needs of families ahead of special interest groups and additional layers of government bureaucracy. We delivered what Canadian parents wanted: choice. It is no surprise that this government's plan is extraordinarily popular with Canadian families, even though it may not be with the opposition parties.


Mr. Michael Savage:

Mr. Speaker, I hear my colleague, the parliamentary secretary, talk about a system that we think should be built in Canada. His party talks about it being institutionalized and talks about this child care system the way that many in his party talked about medicare 40 years ago. They said that it was a terrible thing, that it would never work and that it would cost money.

We have the lowest child care access rates in the industrialized world. If that is something to be proud of, then we have done something wrong.

Does the parliamentary secretary still believe that we cannot afford to invest in early learning and child care? I do not think that we can afford not to invest in early learning and child care.

Thank heavens we have the Monica Lysacks, the Jody Dallaires, the Martha Friendlys, the Susan Wolstenholmes in Halifax and others who understand this, such as Janet Austin who hosted the meeting for us in Vancouver. They get something that the government does not. We should be investing in our children. We should not be making excuses.
Mr. Ed Komarnicki:

Mr. Speaker, perhaps the hon. member has not heard me. We are investing record amounts of dollars in early learning and child care, something the previous government promised to do on occasion but never did.

Can members imagine cutting $25 billion from the Canada social transfer to the provinces, downloading the responsibility to the provinces and proposing a national child care program to create spaces? Over 13 years there were no spaces created.

The member should apologize every time he gets up on behalf of his government for making promises and not carrying out one logical thing that would create a space and help Canadians families.

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