[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Tuesday, April 16, 1996
.0907 
[English]
The Chairman: Order.
We were holding off, waiting for a few reticent Liberals to arrive.
Welcome - especially welcome to our colleague Svend, who is not a member of the committee. We're glad to have you this morning, Svend.
Welcome to our witnesses from Campaign 2000
[Translation]
and we also have the pleasure of welcoming our colleague, Mr. Dubé.
[English]
We are going to spend the first part of this session hearing from our friends from Campaign 2000, and then we're going to go in camera to do some other things. I say this in the context of some of the MPs here who are not members of the committee. The matters of business are going to be dealt with after the witnesses leave - you are aware of that, of course - at 9:45 a.m. or so.
I've got a little problem this morning insofar as the witnesses are concerned, in that they don't have a translated text, and therefore we don't have a text we can circulate. We require, as a matter not only of courtesy but also of need, that witnesses who purport to represent national organizations before this committee ought to do so in both official languages. There is a text available in English, but it's our policy not to circulate that until we have the text in both languages.
So at this point, Rosemarie, you have the option of withdrawing until you get a text in both languages or of proceeding orally.
Ms Rosemarie Popham (Chair, Campaign 2000): That's a choice?
The Chairman: Yes. It is a choice, given that you were made aware of the fact beforehand.
Ms Popham: So we can proceed?
The Chairman: You can proceed orally without circulating your text, or you can come back when you have a text in both languages.
Ms Popham: I think we'd like to proceed orally. I offer my apologies for not having it in both languages. It is very difficult for us.
The Chairman: Again, I hope the clerk made you aware that, had you given it to us in time, we could have done it for you.
Ms Popham: The clerk did her job well.
The Chairman: Okay. Please proceed.
Ms Popham: Campaign 2000 is very pleased to be here today and pleased that the committee has decided to focus on the child and place it at the very centre of its deliberations.
.0910
Let me tell you why. In 1996 children are the least heard and the most seriously disadvantaged group. If the 1.3 million children who live in poverty linked arms they would form a line 1,000 miles long across this country. There are 300,000 more poor children than there were in 1989, when all the parties in the House of Commons resolved to end child poverty by the year 2000.
What's perhaps the most disturbing news is that a recent Stats Canada report indicated that, despite the myth that if you try hard everyone has an equal chance, the child of a poor family is more likely to be poor than the child of a non-poor family. In fact, of all the children born to poor fathers twenty years ago, only one out of twenty have been able to transcend to the highest income level. So much for the myth of equal opportunity.
In 1993 Sylvia Hewlett, who is an American economist and UNICEF researcher, wrote a compelling study called Child Neglect in Rich Nations, and that certainly seems to apply to Canada. She describes two approaches to caring for children: a neglect-filled Anglo-American model where governments have slashed spending for families with children, and a European model where governments have indeed strengthened safety nets for children during the 1990s. In the Anglo-American countries she included Canada.
As a result of the differences in our approach, a Canadian child is three times more likely to be poor than a Dutch child, four times more likely to be poor than a Belgian child, and twenty times more likely than a Swedish child. In fact, we rate only better than the U.S. in our child poverty rates. Each year Campaign 2000, which is a coalition of 50 partners across Canada, puts out a report card reporting on how well children have done year after year since 1989, and each year things get worse.
The partners in Campaign 2000 are made up of organizations representing health, social services, policy groups, women's groups, visible minority groups, food banks, anti-poverty groups, children-serving groups, child welfare groups, etc. Obviously all the partners could not be here today, but I am joined by nine of the partners in the campaign; four of us will speak today on our brief and others will be available for responding to questions. I'd just like to briefly introduce each of us at the table.
My name is Rosemarie Popham and I'm the coordinator of Campaign 2000. Joining me are Lynne Toupin from the National Anti-Poverty Group, Liz Tyrwhitt from the Child Care Advocacy Association, Nöelle-Dominique Willems from the Child Poverty Action Group, Kristin Underwood from the Canada Institute of Child Health, Christa Freiler from the Child Poverty Action Group, and Alla Ivask from the....
Ms Alla Ivask (Executive Director, Canadian Association of Family Resource Programs): Canadian Association of Family Resource Programs.
Ms Popham: Thank you. They've recently changed their name.
What we would like to do today is not spend a lot of time identifying the problem further. All of you will have already received a report card from Campaign 2000 and I'd be happy to give you another if you happen to have misplaced it.
What we'd like to do is focus on some policy solutions that we believe are at hand and possible. I will speak very briefly to that and will be joined by three other members in describing those solutions. The more detailed of those are included in a document called ``Investing in the Next Generation'', which you also have received, but again if you would like another copy we'd be happy to provide you with one. It's in French and English, as is our report card.
We understand your concern about the determinants of health, so we've tried to structure our presentation to you today around three of those determinants, to which we will speak.
First of all, we wanted to provide a framework of how we think government must proceed in addressing the needs of children, and that's through a life cycle approach. We believe Canada's attempt to tackle child poverty through narrow, poverty-driven policies has not worked. Witness what has happened in the last five years.
.0915
We believe we need a broad, family, policy-based framework for strengthening families and children in Canada, which we call a life cycle strategy.
A life cycle perspective includes all families through their entire life courses. Its foremost objective is to prevent problems, rather than rushing in once the damage is done. Economically, it focuses on families with modest and medium incomes, as well as on poor families. These families are most vulnerable to life cycle events that lead to poverty.
Because the strategy of a life cycle approach is preventative, we believe it makes the most effective use of public dollars.
I'd like to highlight three characteristics of a life cycle approach.
One is that it seeks to help families through all their difficult transitions and to ensure an adequate living standard at each stage of their life cycle.
Two, a life cycle strategy invests in children at all of the critical stages. Although early experiences and influences are critically important to children's development, research shows that negative starts can be reversed, albeit with more effort, and there is no single period in a child's life, such as early childhood, when investments inoculate children and ensure healthy development for the balance of their lives.
Therefore, to achieve a lasting impact, we believe society must invest in children at all of the critical stages of their lives. Just briefly, this is what they are. A life cycle strategy has specific objectives for each stage of family transition: firstly, for prospective parents; secondly, for parents; thirdly, for children.
I'd like to ask Ms Toupin, Ms Tyrwhitt, and Ms Freiler to describe the components of a life cycle strategy, so I'll pass it over to them to give you a bit more detail.
[Translation]
Mrs. Lynn Toupin (National Anti-Poverty Group, Campaign 2000): Good morning. There are essentially three broad strategies in what we're putting forth and I don't think we'll be saying anything new on that this morning.
For children to succeed and to avoid pauperization of children, three elements must be considered: first, the matter of jobs for the parents; secondly, the matter of an on-going and consistent community-based support system; and thirdly, an adequate social security system for those periods of time when people are without work.
This morning, I will address briefly the matter of employment and the impact that can have on poor families. It goes without saying that poor children come from poor families; so the matter of family poverty should be addressed squarely. It's an element that's rather obvious, but it deserves being stressed and underlined. Children themselves are not poor, it's their parents who have problems.
Since 1989, we have witnessed a setback because of a serious unemployment problem in this country. The number of children belonging to families who have experienced unemployment since 1989 has risen to 55% and it can be seen that the lack of jobs has a negative impact on those families.
We have concerns about this on-going change to unemployment insurance. Without going into the details, because we know that there's a bill on that, we would like to remind you that families must be protected against the proposed changes in the area of unemployment insurance benefits.
It should also be noted that, since 1989, we've seen a lot of changes in the kind of employment that exists. There are far fewer full-time and well paying jobs and far more are part-time and contract.
The Economic Council of Canada announced a few years ago that there would be a polarization between well-being jobs, on the one hand, and a lot of other jobs at the other end of the scale that is low paying, part-time contract jobs where we now find more and more people.
.0920
[English]
If you want to understand the importance of the relationship between child poverty and employment, you only have to look at the statistics for 1994. With significant job creation during that year we were able to see a reversal, albeit small, in the child poverty rates. This is again quite obvious, but the need to continue to work on job creation strategies is clearly an important part of dealing with the child poverty problem in Canada.
A couple of other obvious points. We have more and more families now working full time to be able to make ends meet. The notion of having one parent at home is no longer viable for many families. It's an economic necessity for the two parents to be working full time or at whatever jobs they have available to them.
Young families have been particularly hard hit by the new labour market. It's difficult for the parents to find an effective toehold in the market. They are often the ones who are subject to contract or part-time work, which makes it difficult for them to make gains, and poverty rates among young families reflect this new economic reality. I would point out that the Liberal government wants to move in the direction of dealing with youth unemployment, but I would hope the definition of ``youth'' is fairly large, to encompass this growing number of young families where there are severe problems in gaining adequate employment.
It's not just a question of dollars and cents, either. While that is important, and having access to adequate and stable incomes is a necessity to alleviate the child poverty problem in Canada, it must be recognized also that not having access to that kind of employment leads to further marginalization, away from the mainstream of society. It is clear the parents of these children want to contribute. They want to participate in society. Not giving them that opportunity further marginalizes them away from the other elements of society. It's not just a question of money. It's also a question of contributing.
Finally, I just want to point out the high levels of stress that are brought on by the fact that parents are not able to secure employment, the high degree of guilt on their part because they're not able to make ends meet and not able to respond to the needs of their children. Having been both a teacher and a school principal in a low-income area for some time, I can attest to the real consequences of unemployment for families, particularly over extended periods. Stress levels are high. You see families having to move because they are no longer able to meet the cost of their accommodation. The indignities they feel in going into food banks is something you see. We also see the impact in the classroom in growing inattentiveness, stress, days missed, etc. The effects are very clear. They're ripple effects, but they ripple beyond just the family into the community and society as a whole.
Ms Popham: About Campaign 2000's proposal for how you respond to this dilemma, the first foundation of our life cycle strategy is in fact national strategies to generate sustaining employment. We'd now like to speak to the second determinant, social support networks.
Ms Liz Tyrwhitt (Coordinator, Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada): Support from families, friends, and communities is associated with better health. Some experts conclude that the health effects of social relationships may be as important as established risk factors such as smoking, physical activity, obesity, and high blood pressure.
The reality of the last five years.
In the mid-1980s the prospects for child care looked rather promising, as provincial governments responded to a flurry of federal activity on child care. In most provinces there were improved regulations to support quality child care programs. However, in the 1990s federal cutbacks, the capping of the Canada Assistance Plan, and the recession have had a significant influence on further provincial cutbacks to child care. CAP was the only sustaining program to support federal participation in cost-sharing for community programs for children, including child care.
The CHST replaced CAP on April 1. As a result, funding for children's services, child welfare, family counselling, and child care have been further eroded and the federal role diminished. Within the child care sector, subsidies for low-income families are likely to be cut at the provincial level. Only one in six Canadian pre-school-aged children has access to quality, regulated child care services.
.0925
Part of Campaign 2000's foundation of a life cycle strategy includes the goals of a responsive community support system, which are to promote healthy child development, enhance learning, and help families through difficult transitions.
The community support system should include: health education throughout the life cycle of children; prenatal, postnatal, and nutrition programs; child care and family resource programs; family life education and youth support programs; partnerships between schools and communities to meet the diverse learning needs of children; and training and second-chance opportunities for youth to complete secondary education.
Each level of government has a responsibility. The municipal and provincial governments, along with the voluntary organizations, provide the services. The provincial government protects the financial base of these services. The federal government funds and sets a policy framework for health services and child care.
Campaign 2000 is very disturbed by the apparent reduction of leadership from the federal government in relation to child care. The $310 million that the federal government spent on child care each year through CAP must not be lost. Moreover, the red book promise must be honoured.
Ms Popham: The third foundation of a life cycle strategy is a supportive social security system. Ms Freiler will speak to that.
Ms Christa Freiler (Coordinator, Child Poverty Action Group): Income, which you know as well as we, is the single most important determinant of health. You are probably more familiar than we are at this point with the studies that show that health status improves at each step up the income hierarchy. We also know now that societies that are reasonably prosperous, such as ours, and that have an equitable distribution of wealth, have the healthiest populations, regardless of the amount of money they actually spend on health care.
What does Campaign 2000 propose? Lynn has already talked about employment strategies. That is an important foundation, obviously. Equally important is a national social security system to protect and enhance the living standards of families with children. When I talk about a social security system to enhance and protect, I'm talking both about preventing families from falling into poverty in the first place, as well as reducing the poverty of those people currently below the poverty line.
I want to stress, as did Liz Tyrwhitt, the importance of a strong federal government role in income security for families with kids. It has been our position, and that of many other national organizations, that the federal government has a primary responsibility for the income needs of families with children, just as it does with senior citizens. The federal government's success in reducing poverty among seniors is in large part due to the fact that it has taken a strong leadership role in the last twenty years. We would like to see them take the same leadership role with respect to families with kids.
Why the federal government? There are a number of reasons. One, the federal government has the tools, the taxation tools and redistributive tools, that the provinces do not have.
Second, only the federal government can ensure that you have the equity and consistency needed with respect to incomes across the country. We'd also argue that the federal government has the moral responsibility to address the income needs of families with kids, even though the government's moral authority is increasingly being questioned.
It's our position that it is totally inappropriate for provincial social assistance to be the primary source of incomes for families with kids, which is the situation we have now. If things continue in the direction in which they've been going, the provinces will be expected to assume even greater responsibility for income needs of families with children.
We're proposing four programs. I won't get into detail. Rosemarie has already alluded to investing in the next generation, which has these proposals in some detail. But I'll just mention them. We're proposing a national children's benefit run by the federal government, a comprehensive child care system, which Liz talked about, child support guidelines and enforcement - that is an area in which there is positive progress - and finally, a national youth education endowment.
.0930
In conclusion, I just want to summarize quickly what some of the goals of the national children's benefit should be. One, of course, is to demonstrate society's collective responsibility to contribute to the care of children. The second is to reduce income disparities among families with children, promoting social inclusion and equal life chances for all children. Another is to protect and enhance the living standards of modest-income families and, finally, to reduce the prospects of deep divisions in our communities and our society brought about by a strategy of targeting.
Rosemarie has alluded to the fact that we know from other jurisdictions and we know from the evidence beginning to mount here that a strategy focusing exclusively on those people already in poverty not only doesn't work, because it doesn't even particularly reduce poverty, but it is also potentially a highly divisive strategy. It would pit modest-income families - the people Lynne was talking about who are struggling to eke out a decent existence in this kind of labour market - against the people who are living in even more dire situations of deprivation. And I think this is not the kind of situation any level of government in Canada would like to see. I think it is one of the dangers of moving toward proposals focusing ever more on targeting our resources to those, as we put it, most in need.
Ms Popham: In Canada, over the past two decades, we began to build good solid supports for families with children. In fact, we did begin to put in place a good child care system and maternity leave system and a child tax benefit.
We're proposing that through a life cycle strategy we could enhance these and maintain them. Or we can continue to drift inexorably toward the American model, deserting our children and our collective responsibility to them. And we don't want this to happen.
The question is how can we stop it from happening. I want to tell you about a simple and elegant solution that Campaign 2000 would like to propose. It is called a social investment fund for families with children. It's an earmarked and designated fund to finance support for children, not unlike CPP for adults or EI or UI for vulnerable, work-age Canadians.
This fund would accomplish four things. It would strengthen the ability of families to provide greater economic security for their children without reducing the role of parents, which is a major concern for many Canadians; it would be transparent because it would be an earmarked fund and Canadians clearly would know where their tax dollars would go - this would relieve people's skepticism about where their tax dollars go, which is a major concern for many Canadians; it would begin to rebuild our collective responsibility for children, which is slipping away; and it would give Canada a strong, vital workforce because we would have invested in children and in our future.
We believe the federal government can invest in children through a social investment fund. It would be like a piggy bank that would keep moneys for children separate from general revenues and therefore from deficit reduction. In Europe, funds supplementing general revenues enjoy popular support when they're dedicated to valued social purposes, and surely our children should fall into this category.
We could start with the programs where we now spend money on children, programs like child care, the GST credit for low-income families, and the child tax benefit. These could be the first deposit into the social investment fund. We believe the government needs to make this deposit immediately. Otherwise, even the money now directed to children is going to continue to slip away, as it has over the past five years.
The federal government devotes entire ministries to dramatic international negotiations championing fish and their future. We believe we must take leadership to protect our children and conserve their values for our country's future. We must make sure children are protected from the uncertainties ahead.
In the past year, Campaign 2000 has appeared before innumerable standing committees of this House, urging each to address the issue of child poverty. We are convinced that each within its mandate is sincere in wanting to improve the situation for poor children. But none of them, to date, has had the mandate to specifically address the situation of increasing economic security for children. As a result, there has been no comprehensive and no interrelated approach to support and invest in our country's most valuable resource, our children. We believe this is a unique contribution that in fact this Standing Committee on Health can make through its mandate to its four preventative health strategies. We are very, very hopeful about the outcome.
.0935
In summary, we have four specific recommendations. First, we urge the Standing Committee on Health to adopt a life cycle strategy as a policy framework for families with children, a life cycle strategy investing in children at all the critical stages in their life.
Secondly, we urge the standing committee to promote the social investment fund for families with children. This would be a designated fund to ensure critical federal leadership, which Christa talked about, in addressing the determinants of health and protecting children from deficit reduction.
Thirdly, we urge the federal government to pursue national strategies to generate sustaining employment. Without this we will not break the cycle.
Finally, Campaign 2000 urges the standing committee to use its moneys to begin to establish time lines and benchmarks to begin to reduce child poverty, a commitment made six years ago.
The Chairman: Rosemarie, I'm from Newfoundland. There's actually a fairly radical school of thought there that believes if you protect the future of the fish you might be in the process of protecting the future of the children there as well.
Ms Popham: I'm sure there's a relationship.
The Chairman: They're not that unrelated.
Ms Popham: We certainly support the idea of generating jobs for people.
The Chairman: I'm glad for that, because you gave an impression of the contrary in your statement.
The witnesses have elected to talk through most of their time. This does not leave a lot of time for questions, but we have a few minutes. We'll go to Mrs. Picard.
[Translation]
Mrs. Picard (Drummond): Thank you for your submission, ladies. It was most interesting. I was quite touched. I also thank you for working to improve our children's lot.
You are proposing a program called "Investing in the Next Generation". Do you know that the Department of Health presently has 30 programs focused on preventative care for and health of children?
I'd like to know if your organization has made an evaluation of those programs. Would you suggest that we withdraw them to introduce yours which, in your opinion, would be more efficient?
[English]
Ms Popham: I really want to clarify what we were proposing. In fact it is three foundations of the life cycle strategy. It would include strong community-based programs and an income security system for children, not one or the other. We were not proposing one be reduced in order to enhance the other.
[Translation]
Mrs. Noëlle-Dominique Willems (Child Poverty Action Group): I'll try to answer.
We haven't made an evaluation of those programs, but it should be realized that for several years now, as the Secretary of State Department doesn't exist anymore, the programs being developed in the context of the Brighter Futures initiative are in fact programs that serve as incubators for new ideas or approaches.
We're not asking that those approaches be withdrawn because that sort of thing just doesn't exist elsewhere in the federal government. However, we would like to see that money put into the Social Investment Fund as part of development projects.
We should continue our research on preventative strategies and health promotion and it should be done in a much more concerted fashion while taking into account employment needs. It can't be done by a single department. There has to be an overall, well thought-out and conscious approach.
[English]
Mr. Szabo (Mississauga South): I wish we had a lot of time to talk about it because you've said a lot of things I'd like to address. There's just not enough time.
Seventy percent of parents with preschool children where both parents are working said if they had the choice and means they would choose for one of them to stay at home with their child. That was an Angus Reid survey in 1994 and Maclean's magazine the last two years running.
.0940
We've heard a lot from people about the importance of the first three years of life, when 80% of the development of the brain occurs. We've heard about investing in that early childhood development and the importance of a secure, consistent bonding with an adult. I didn't say ``parent''; I said ``adult''. The fact that institutionalized child care has such a high turnover and such low pay rates that you couldn't get quality child care at $21,000 a year, which is what Ontario is looking to target, is a problem.
Dr. Dan Offord, of the Chedoke-McMaster children in distress centre, says that only 5% of the patients who go through his place have poverty-related problems. It's not poverty that's causing those children distress.
Dr. Susan Bradley, psychiatrist and chief at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, has said that if she had one recommendation to give families with preschool children where both worked, it would be to take a course in time management. You have such a small window of opportunity to parent, you have to go home, do laundry, make phone calls, but you'll play with the kid when you want to play, not when the kid does. These are the problems she sees.
I'm sorry to say this, but throughout the whole presentation I got the impression that you were saying that somebody other than the parents, other than the family, was responsible for the children, that somebody else had to raise the children. It's a terrible message to give.
I gave a radio interview in Calgary about two weeks ago. It was proposing a tax break for a stay-at-home parent. One of the callers said, ``We have a 50% divorce rate. What are you doing for us?''
What can you do with family breakdown? All your energy, all your efforts.... If you would deal with why the family breaks up, why two people feel they're better off apart than together....
Why would people such as Dr. Penelope Leach write books such as Children First and say: if you're going to be a parent, understand your responsibilities; put the interest of the child ahead of your own.
Economic necessity is a fallacy in so many cases because after taxes, after child care costs, after the cost of employment, the net take-home pay is so small that parents are saying it's not worth it. It is a fallacy to say that it's economically necessary for both parents to work, when the cost or the implications for the positive outcomes of young children are so severe.
These are some of the issues that I wish I could talk to you about. I know we don't have time, but I want you to know that I didn't hear very much about the responsibilities of the family being the primary responsibilities for those children - exactly what President Clinton said in his last State of the Union Address about the importance of the family and children, and about how difficult it is to be a parent, but how it is even more difficult to be a child.
Ms Popham: You probably would find common ground with Campaign 2000 in that we would agree that this is extremely complex and that there is not enough time to address all of the issues.
I think there was a question among the statements you made, which was if we were saying that somebody other than the parent should raise the children. We certainly do not want to leave that impression. We are suggesting that in the countries where they've been able to provide supports for parents to do an optimum job of raising children, who are therefore going to be good citizens, there has been a role not just for the parent but also for the state.
It was our understanding that in coming to this committee it would be appropriate to make recommendations in regard to the role of the state. Certainly in each of our organizations we also are well aware of the role of the parent and believe that parents need strong support in order to do their job best.
I would be happy to address the specific items you raised, but, given the time available, I'm not sure that this is the appropriate place. The one I think it is important for the record to address is the statement by Dr. Offord about poverty. I didn't hear his presentation, but I'm well aware of the Ontario child health care study in 1988 in which his report so graphically pointed out the impacts of poverty on children and that unless you address that as an issue you are never going to have children who are able to compete in international economies.
.0945
So we would continue to believe poverty must be addressed, and that is a role we would hope this committee would take seriously.
Ms Freiler: I was interested in the comments you made and attributed to Penelope Leach, because I think Penelope Leach has two different reputations. Most of us know her from her having written Your Baby from Birth to Age Five, and some of us are still reading it, some of us for the second time.
What some people don't know is that she's also a strong advocate of collective responsibility for children. She's been politically very involved in Britain in the past five years or so on issues of national responsibilities, income responsibilities. Some of the stuff we have talked about today could have been taken right out of her latest book, in fact.
So it was interesting that you would have cited her in one context while neglecting to mention that she has the same assessment of what children need but reaches very different conclusions about what the joint responsibilities of parents and governments are. She also is a very firm believer in children being placed and being taken care of by people other than their parents, if that is necessary or desirable, as long as it's of good quality, and in income playing a central and critical role in children's development. This is the same person who draws the same conclusions as we've put forward today.
The Chairman: John.
Mr. Godfrey (Don Valley West): I'm sorry I was a little late.
First, the first thing you're asking of this committee and the government is to make sure we get the framework right -
Ms Popham: Right.
Mr. Godfrey: - that is to say, we should look not simply at the cycle of childhood but at life cycle approaches. I wanted to make sure I had that right.
Secondly, I assume if one had the theory down, building on the work of Offord and all the people who work on the determinants of health, you would then want to chunk out the various tasks that would be allocated to the various committees you appear before. Since you sketch such a broad agenda of work, though it's hard to pick one thing over another, if you said there's one task to get on with more than any other that might be doable, would you advocate that we, or this committee, which I'm visiting, look at early childhood and its supports - I'm thinking of early childhood intervention - because of the obviously crucial issue of getting it right in the first three years?
I understand all of it is important if you take a life cycle approach, but if you had to get on with one thing, you might want to build on the various community incentives and efforts that were demonstrated at the Winnipeg conference last fall, where there does seem to be a bit of a network and where there seems to be something to build on that doesn't demand that we wait for a whole national program to come into place or to establish the foundations you describe.
Ms Popham: We would certainly recommend that you start by building on the things we know are working well. Those first three years of life are critically important, but as we said, they are not an inoculation against problems in the future. We have to look at the longer range.
Community-based programs are vitally important, for the reasons Nöelle-Dominique gave - they are incubators for good ideas, they involve people in the community - but they are not in themselves the solution. They must take place within the context of a secure income base for families with children. That is clearly a role communities cannot provide, nor can the province. The federal government clearly has a role there. That's where we come to our recommendation of a social investment fund.
The final piece of that - I'm responding to the question about those first three years - is the importance of a national leadership on child care.
Mr. Godfrey: A national leadership that would bring into it all the local elements, the provincial elements, the voluntary elements, the professional elements, into an integrated strategy that aligns itself with the framework you outlined at the beginning.
Ms Popham: Yes.
Mr. Godfrey: Thank you.
The Chairman: Sharon.
Mrs. Hayes (Port Moody - Coquitlam): My intervention will be brief. I do have concerns about national day care and some of the philosophies surrounding that, in the sense that people can't choose or find their own best means for doing that. I know in my community it is the community choice to find their own day care in a community-based setting rather than in a government program type of setting.
.0950
You did quote the statistic that one in six Canadians has access to quality day care. Certainly from my own experience I would challenge that statement and ask for a definition of the terms ``quality'' and ``one in six'' and so on. For instance, I know we have day care spaces or child care spaces begging for kids in my community.
Ms Popham: Begging for kids.... Would parents have the money to pay for them? Is the issue...?
Mrs. Hayes: There are more spaces than there are children to use them. I don't think it's all that uncommon in the sense that these are community-based facilities. Certainly in my experience people like informal day care. That's the choice.
So what is your definition of ``one in six'', and do you have a reflection of the Canadian will when you say that?
Ms Popham: Liz, in terms of the research, can you speak to that?
Ms Tyrwhitt: I'm going to respond to a couple of things. First of all, I think the day care and the child care that is provided in many cases is run with parents involved, so we're talking about community-based child care services and there isn't the great separation between the parent and the child care service. Often the parent is very involved in the running of the child care service. I think it's really important to say that.
In terms of that figure, it's one in six children, not one in six Canadians. Wendy, do you want to speak to this? Wendy is my co-partner.
Ms Wendy Atkin (Representative, Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada): It's one in six children, not one in six Canadians.
Mrs. Hayes: You stated that one in six have access to quality day care, which implies five out of six don't. That's my question.
Ms Popham: If you're interested in the research we'd be very happy to provide that to you, because it sounds like it is an important issue and we should all have the research.
Ms Tyrwhitt: There is material about that.
Mrs. Hayes: It's a very shocking statement. As I say, it doesn't reflect what I've seen, and for you to make it you should be able to support it.
Ms Tyrwhitt: We'll look at that and we'll get back to you.
I want to state something else. We had an event on March 6 and Peter Moss came to talk about child care in the European Union. One of the most pressing things he said is that if you're going to have good quality child care you need government intervention.
Private involvement is fine, but you can't have child care based solely on parents' earnings. It's just not possible to have a quality, comprehensive, accessible system with only parental involvement. We need a state role in child care and we need a municipal, a provincial and a federal role in child care.
Ms Popham: Mr. Chair, I might also suggest that if child care is a specific concern of the committee, I'm sure the child care people would be happy to come back and speak to it more.
Ms Tyrwhitt: In fact, we asked to speak before this committee. We'd be very pleased to come and speak and give a presentation about child care.
Mr. Robinson (Burnaby - Kingsway): Mr. Chairman, I wonder if any documentation could be forwarded to the clerk for distribution to all members of the committee.
The Chairman: Yes. That can certainly be done. Often an individual member of a committee expresses a view that's not necessarily the view of the committee.
As for what Sharon has said, I can tell you that I can't confirm or contradict your one out of six number, but I can tell you that my sense is that the overwhelming majority of children in Canada don't have access to quality child care, whether that number is five out of six or what. But I know it's overwhelming.
If there are figures you can supply to the committee, Sharon and the others will get them.
Ms Tyrwhitt: Yes. We have material that is bilingual. I'll send the committee that material.
The Chairman: All right.
Are you finished, Sharon?
Mrs. Hayes: Yes, thank you.
The Chairman: We have Andy and then Svend, please.
Mr. Scott (Fredericton - York - Sunbury): Welcome, everyone. I'd like to commend you for your approach. I'm one of those who believes that it is a collective responsibility, a community's responsibility.
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I feel in some way inadequate. I don't have any people I can quote except a whole bunch of constituents who would love dearly to be able to do all the things we would want them to be able to do, but they can't do them because they don't have any money or they don't have a job or they don't have access to child care.
Having said that, I'd like to understand where you sit on one of the issues. I also am one of those who would like to see an investment fund. I don't know whether that's the right term or how you actually - I don't like to use the word ``target'' - dedicate energies in a much more holistic way towards certain achievable outcomes.
I'm also interested in how you feel about some of the other things. You mentioned UI, for instance. Efforts have been made to bring a social policy dimension to the unemployment insurance program. Those have not been well received. I come from a part of the country where it is seen as a social program, so that is a little surprising to me.
Where are you on the family income supplement? I'm not trying to draw anybody into this, but I would like to know how much we can use whatever programs we can find - because this would be my approach - to deal with the problem. If UI is one of them, then we should do it.
I'm not even suggesting you have to like the way it's done or where the money comes from. I understand all those arguments. But is it wrong to use whatever programs you can find to do good?
Ms Popham: Campaign 2000 has made a submission on EI to the HRD committee, and we'd be quite happy to share it with this committee as well.
Your question is, is it wrong? Our response would be what's wrong is to have dismantled and reduced the programs that were in place to support families with children and now try to replace them with far from adequate programs that are targeted to very specific populations. So we are opposed to the family income supplement as a mechanism for addressing child poverty.
In terms of adequacy there's obviously an issue, and in terms of who really will benefit from that and to what degree, we think it's a very small number of people and that they still will be worse off than they would have been five years ago. That's why we're suggesting a social investment fund, because then all poor children could benefit from it, not just those fewer and fewer whose parents happen to qualify for EI for a shorter and shorter period of time. So we did not support the family income supplement.
Mr. Scott: Are they necessarily mutually exclusive?
Ms Popham: They're mutually exclusive as long as there's nothing else on the table, and there's nothing on the table right now that would support families on social assistance or families who are unemployed and no longer eligible for EI. It's not part of an integrated, consolidated approach. It's a very specific and limited approach. Therefore we would not see it as a solution.
Ms Freiler: I'd like to add to that, because similar concerns have been raised about the working income supplement, which was recently increased and will be doubled in the next couple of years, as announced in the federal budget. A lot of people are critical of that because it goes only to children whose parents are working and excludes the 800,000 children whose parents are on social assistance. So there's a major equity problem.
In addition, a number of people have raised the concern that about $150 million a year is lost because that benefit is not indexed. The federal government is putting $250 million back in, which means it's compensating for eighteen months' worth of erosion as a result of the lack of indexation.
Some of it has to do with the fact that conceptually it may be the wrong thing, and, as Rosemarie said, some of it is that in some cases these small amounts in programs tacked on here and there barely compensate for what's being lost in other ways. You need to look at the overall impact on families with kids. From an overall impact point of view, there hasn't been a lot happening that's been very impressive.
Your colleague asked what we are recommending about getting the framework right. I think there is a ``getting the framework right'' set of issues here. I don't know. Your question is, is it wrong or right to be doing something? Is that better than nothing? It's hard to answer that in the abstract.
Mr. Scott: This is very specific. This is a very specific program in a very specific place.
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Ms Toupin: The feds are putting some money into this, and you probably know more about where this program is at then I do. With the income supplementation for single moms in New Brunswick and in B.C. - and I was just reading something last week - the initial indication there is that they hope they've moved up the ladder after three years so you can take them off the income supplement program and they don't suffer any particular problems. In reality, though, the initial data I saw indicate that in some cases it's not happening. In many cases they're still at minimum wage rates about a year and a half into the program, and unless they have a 30% wage rate increase on average, they're out of luck here.
So I think we really do have to look at that, as well as at the impacts. There are some partial solutions, but what we like about the strategy is that we're trying to hit at different pieces so that it's more comprehensive and more encompassing.
The Chairman: Svend.
Mr. Robinson: Thanks very much. I will be brief.
I want to thank the witnesses for their presentation. I certainly strongly support your objectives. It was a former leader of my party who introduced the motion in 1989 that was unanimously supported by the House.
As a man, I also just want to comment on the fact that it's women who are once again leading on this issue. When I look at the witnesses around the table, it's women who are disproportionately affected by the cuts and it's women who are here pleading for improvements in the lives of children and poor families. I thank you for the leadership you've shown on that.
I also have to say, Mr. Chairman, that my constituency is next door to Sharon Hayes' constituency. There's a desperate shortage of accessible, affordable child care in Burnaby - Kingsway, so I'm delighted to hear that there are openings available next door. I will certainly make that known to my constituents.
Mrs. Hayes: Informal day care is the choice of Port Moody - Coquitlam.
Mr. Robinson: Well, Mr. Chairman, my question - and I do just have the one question - is to ask the witnesses if they could just elaborate on the impact of what happened on April 1 of this year, that being the CHST and the very significant cuts in transfer payments, as well as the elimination of the Canada Assistance Plan and any national standards. In terms of your overall objectives, I would think that would have a pretty devastating impact. I wonder if you just might elaborate on the effect of that on poor kids and poor families.
Ms Toupin: Well, I think you're quite right. April 1, as you know, was the magical day. We've already started to see the consequences and I think we're going to see far more.
I'll give you one real example from as recently as last week from Northumberland County, which is not all that far from here; it's Cobourg, Ontario. Because there were changes and there are no more national standards, people who are on welfare and who are asking for interim assistance now have to wait eleven weeks on average. That means they're getting by for almost three months without a single penny. I asked how these people actually live - these are people with families, by the way - but they don't know how they're getting by. They're going to food banks; they're trying to stay with friends. But it is really what we most feared and it is already happening in some parts of Canada.
So the end of national standards means there is no support, there's no more bottom safety net for families on welfare in particular. And remember, these are people who have kids. These are not just the single employables that we have a tendency to think about.
In terms of standards, I think we have to look at the fact that it's going to have impacts on all kinds of programs. The standards are also gone for many programs, including day care, including a number of other social services as well that were related to the CHST, and including home care for seniors - you have the whole range. But the sheer magnitude of the cuts is going to have significant impacts on kids, and particularly kids on welfare. There's no more appeal system in place, so if you have an emergency - for example, your fridge dies - in some parts of Canada you're already out of luck. You have to find alternative ways to keep your milk cold for your kids. It's that simple. I think we're only starting to see the tip of the iceberg in terms of the real impacts.
What's more distressing for us is the fact that most of the provinces are not going to be very forward in terms of giving us the real data that we need to collect to know as a society what the real impacts are in terms of these particular cuts. Quite frankly, at this point in time, we have real concerns because we're hearing more and more about continued devolution of powers to the provinces. How can you beat the child poverty problem in Canada if ultimately it's going to be the individual responsibility of all the provinces? You're not going to come any where near your Campaign 2000 promise. In fact, I think we're going to be going in the other direction.
Ms Tyrwhitt: If I could just respond, in the written brief I had indicated that child care in the 1980s did expand in the provinces. People in the provinces did respond to federal initiatives about child care. But in the 1990s, when the federal role decreased with federal cutbacks, the capping of CAP and the recession.... These have all had an impact on the development of child care in the provinces. In Newfoundland start-up grants and operating grants were eliminated in 1993. In New Brunswick operating grants were first reduced, then eliminated in 1995. In Manitoba operating grants to child care centres were reduced by 4% and grants to nursery schools were reduced by 50%. In Alberta operating grants were decreased substantially in 1990 and additional cuts were made in 1994 and 1996 and are projected for 1997. In Ontario cuts are also expected, as well as a system review that will lower standards in the delivery of child care.
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I think this speaks to a real need for a federal role in child care.
Ms Popham: I think the responses both Lynn and Liz have made to the question underline the fact that without that federal leadership we're going to see increasing disparities in the provinces and reductions in expenditures. We're already seeing those, and children are going to be the primary victims of them.
Mrs. Hayes: About the definition of child care and who it is that qualifies for it, I know in the recent budget the age of the child care deduction was raised from 14 to 16. Are you looking at the total number of children in that age group and the numbers who use child care? What is the definition of access to child care? Do you know?
Ms Tyrwhitt: From zero to twelve years.
Mrs. Hayes: From zero to twelve? Will the new legislation affect that, in your determination? Now a child is qualified for the child care expense up to age sixteen.
Ms Freiler: I think something needs to be clarified. You're talking about the child care expense deduction. That's not what Liz is talking about.
Mrs. Hayes: I brought that up just because that is the definition of child care expense deduction. What is your definition of who it is who needs child care? What numbers are used?
Ms Popham: I think Mrs. Hayes has raised a point again about the need for more information in order to clarify. We certainly will provide that to her.
Mrs. Hayes: You don't know that now, but you'll let us know?
Ms Popham: Yes.
The Chairman: Paul has the last word.
Mr. Szabo: I believe yesterday in The Globe I read a story that some jurisdiction is freezing its funding of child care because an audit showed 1,000 spaces out of something like 9,000 spaces were unutilized. Who saw the story? It was subsidized day care and they found out it just wasn't being used. It was available, but it wasn't being used.
I ask the question so you would give us an idea of the vintage of some of the statistics being used here, because there are signs.... In my own community I have day cares going out of business because they can't find enough kids for them. This issue about subsidized spaces not being used.... It's sending us a signal.
Ms Freiler: Are you sure of that? Is that true?
Mr. Szabo: Yesterday in The Globe. Who saw it?
Ms Freiler: Are you sure it's subsidized?
Mr. Szabo: Yes, it was subsidized. Government funding was being frozen and withdrawn because a thousand spaces were unused.
Ms Popham: Can I suggest we now have identified the need for more information. We have some people's impressions. It's hard to respond. It is a critically important issue. You've obviously underlined that. Lots of information is around and we'd be pleased to share it and return on it, but I'm not sure we're going to go too much further with people's impressions.
Mr. Szabo: I'll send you the article.
Ms Popham: That would be very helpful. We could exchange information.
The Chairman: This has been useful, and longer than we planned. Thanks for coming.
We're going to take a minute to make the transition to an in camera session.
[Proceedings continue in camera]