SCYR Committee Meeting

SUB-COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH AT RISK OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATUS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

SOUS-COMITÉ SUR LES ENFANTS ET JEUNES À RISQUE DU COMITÉ PERMANENT DES RESOURCES HUMAINES ET DE LA CONDITION DES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, May 4, 1999

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[English]

The Chairman (Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West, Lib.)): We'll bang the gavel and be officially in business, and we will be joined momentarily by absent friends.

By way of introduction, I'll just explain to everybody what we're up to. We have been undertaking a study that has been focusing not exclusively on children and youth at risk, but that's the main subject. The committee has been confronted with many questions. What do we know about children? How do we know what works? How do we measure that? How do we have a sense of it? What sorts of things should we be thinking about for the future? What are the models that should inspire us? What are the trade-offs between income and services? These are some of the questions that have come before us.

Today we're extremely lucky to have an almost unprecedented opportunity to compare two jurisdictions, two provinces of Canada that have taken different routes with regard to children and the services they offer them.

With us is Dr. Fraser Mustard. I have to declare both a longstanding friendship and professional relationship with him, because I used to work for Dr. Mustard at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. He is a long-time advocate of better understanding the human development process concerning children and the determinants of health all wrapped into one.

As he will tell you, he has just produced a major study on the early years for the Government of Ontario. Indeed, in about 20 minutes the Ontario budget will be delivered, and I'm delighted that Dr. Mustard was able to be sufficiently patient so that he will learn, as we will later today, whether the recommendations he made to Premier Harris a couple of weeks ago, which are included in the book, have made it into the budget process. So he will be as intrigued as the rest of us to find out the fate of at least some elements of the report.

[Translation]

What is very interesting in all this is the leadership role Quebec has played. We have a great deal of admiration for both the social values in Quebec and all the measures that that province has taken in support of children. What inspiration can we provide for each other? How can we find common ground at the provincial level with federal support? That will be the focus of our discussions.

I would like to extend a warm welcome to our guests from Quebec, but I believe we are going to start with the report by

[English]

Mustard and McCain, Early Years Study.

Dr. Mustard, the floor is yours. Everyone has a copy of the slides and the summary you provided to us.

Dr. Fraser Mustard (Founding President and Bell Canada Fellow, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research): Mr. Chairman, a French version of the slides is available, but there is no French translation yet of the document that's satisfactory to people whose first language is French. There were some problems in translation.

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There is a copy of the overheads, and let me just briefly go through this for everybody. You'll notice that the title is Reversing the Real Brain Drain. This committee concluded that what happens in conception to age five or six really sets your base for the future. We as a committee said this is as important an area of investment as education or post-secondary education. So that sort of wraps up the report, and that's the reason for the title.

The first chart looks at brain development, opportunity, and investment. Many of you have already seen this. It shows that the brain's malleability is most dynamic during the period from conception to age three. The symptoms that arise from a shortfall in brain development kick in later on, and we run a whole host of what we call repair shop functions, including health care, that kick in later on with rather sizeable expenditures. In Ontario we do not have substantial expenditure in the pre-school period. So that's a mismatch in our report.

The next chart is extremely important. It shows the best assessments we could get our hands on of the development of the wiring of the brain that governs direct sensing systems such as vision but also more complex systems such as arousal and emotion.

We reviewed the neuroscience literature, and I will say one thing about it to remind everybody. The breakthrough in the science of brain development came through solving a problem in vision. If a child is born with a cataract—that's an opacity in the lens—and you remove the cataract later on, the child will never see, whereas in the age group around this table, you have to remove the cataract to see.

If you're born with a wired brain, why can't you see when the cataract is removed? That led Hubel and Wiesel to do the important experiments that demonstrated there actually is a critical period when the signals from the eye must pass to this part of the brain to do the wiring. There's a genetic control on the sensitive period. But it's a nature-nurture story. That's very clear.

People who argue about the brain being totally genetic are wrong. There's a huge component of the environment that influences the development. All of your eight sensing pathways are developed the same way. They all have a sensitive period. So if you're reading to a child at the age of twelve months, you're driving five of your eight sensing pathways: smell, temperature, touch, vision, and sound. That all cross-wires into the core functions of the brain that govern arousal and emotions. I'll come back to that theme a little later on for you.

This also fits into Richard Tremblay's work, that children before they go to school learn how to control the normal aggressive behaviour of a two-year-old. If you mess up on that, the risk of having problems of violence in teenagers... What we've seen in the schools is actually a reflection of this. It's pretty dramatic, and it's time we paid more attention to it. Listening to all the language on television stations about the problems and the shootings in those schools shows that none of them have caught on to what Richard Tremblay has done at the University of Montreal.

So that shows the critical periods of brain development and other functions, and they're largely being set before the ages of six and seven.

If you review all the evidence, which we did in this document, the brain is clearly the pathway to learning, to behaviour, and to a more subtle one, which most people miss, and that is health. Just to remind you, the good historical evidence is that the fact that you and I live longer has very little to do with the health care system, in which you've pumped millions of dollars. It has far more to do with what happens to you when you're very young. That's the historical evidence there, and it's in spades. So what happens to you when you're young sets your risk for chronic diseases in adult life, not all of them but most of them. So that's in our report.

Now we'll turn to economic issues. Despite all the arguments about productivity—and that's where I have to go next—this country has had a flat total factor productivity measurement since 1975. That means that you're not capturing the new technology to create your wealth base. That means, in effect, that you have problems in the distribution of wealth in society, which tends to affect the most vulnerable groups in society. This has historically always been the case. Economists who are historians understand this. The theoretic economists basically have problems coping with that. That shows Canada's data.

Needless to say, if you go to the next chart, our unemployment rate has climbed at the same time as this economic shift is taking place. The next part shows you the number of women working in the labour force, and it's quite substantial. Despite the fact that there are males in my generation who would like to put them all back in the homes to look after the kids, you ain't going to put them back there. So you might as well face up to the reality that women are important and an integral part of the labour force today, and societies have to adjust to that change in making suitable arrangements.

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The next one shows you what has happened to annual wages for men since the break point in the economy, which is around 1975. If you're unfortunate enough to be under 45 years of age, you haven't done as well as the fat cats in my generation. You'll notice that the age group is coming down to the younger age group, so you're obviously affecting the parenting structure of society and its capacity to do the parenting. So in trying to look at the solution to this, you cannot ignore the underlying economic and social changes that are taking place in society.

We could not find good longitudinal data on what's happened to people in Ontario and Canada, but the next chart shows you the percentage of the population below the low-income cut-off, which is called LICO. You'll note that this is sort of a poverty point. You'll notice that in 1975, only 11% of the population was below that. By 1996, 21% of the population was below that, indicating the economic pressures that are being exerted on the population. Ontario is not too dissimilar to the rest of Canada, which the bottom part of that shows. I would add that LICO is the low-income cut-off point after tax, if anybody is really intrigued by it.

So then, as a committee, having worked through all this, they asked, what's the evidence about what's happening to Ontario's children—is it just poverty, or is it a deeper question? The next chart is low receptive vocabulary, which is a measure of verbal skills at four to five years of age. For those of you who don't track this literature, it's an extremely powerful measurement of brain function. It has, in aggregate, not in individuals, very substantial predictive power.

In the Swedish studies, among Swedish children who acquire poor verbal skills during the first five years—remember what I told you about reading, how you're driving multiple sensing pathways—children who at two, three, and four years of age showed poor verbal skills, the males will tend to be functionally illiterate as they go through the school system, and a high proportion of them will be delinquent as teenagers. So this is an extremely important marker, if everybody follows that sequencing. It fits Richard Tremblay's work.

You'll notice that for Ontario, the performance is a gradient. Gradients are hard things for people to put their minds on easily, but at the bottom end of the socio-economic scale—that's to the left—there is a high proportion of people on welfare, low education, low income. About 32% of the kids in Ontario are not functioning well with verbal skills. But there is no threshold. As you come up the socio-economic scale, the proportion in difficulty, which is what the verbal axis shows you, drops. But even at my co-chair's position, Margaret McCain, on the far right, you have close to 10% of the children in difficulty. So the problem is universal; it is not an at-risk question. It's important to understand that.

We could probably show Premier Harris that there were more Ontario children in difficulty in every social class than in the rest of Canada, so we hope he'll say something in his budget speech to try to get at this little issue.

So that's a very powerful marker that all children in Ontario could benefit from some kind of program that vastly helped the preschool period.

The next one is mathematics. This is the six to eleven years of age scale. Again you see it's a gradient. Percentage with low mathematics achievement is a cut-off in the way the study is done. Again, the bulk of the children in difficulty are in the middle-income group. The gap between Ontario and the rest of Canada for children six to ten years of age is one and a half grades, and for those ten to eleven years of age it's two grades. So Ontario is not functioning as well in verbal skills or in mathematics measurement with these young children. The behaviour measurement is slightly different.

We then dug into the grade three math and writing test the school system runs. Here we could not do individual assessments. We had to do it by city census subdivision, so it's aggregated data. Previous data were all individual measurements from the national longitudinal study—which is a great contribution by the federal government, by the way, because without it we never could have done this report. I want to emphasize that to the people from the Government of Canada.

What you have here are the communities, and the circles represent the proportion of number of schools in these little blocks. The horizontal scale this time is low-income cut-off, because we did not have a socio-economic scale that could be applied. The communities on the left are communities that have a high proportion of the population living below the Statistics Canada low-income cut-off, so you can say that they're low-SES communities, and the ones on the right are more prosperous.

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Those of you who live in Ottawa will notice that Kanata and Vanier are on it, and you'll notice the dramatic difference in mathematics performance between Kanata and Vanier. It's really quite dramatic. It stands out. It's probably a disgrace, to be quite honest, for those of you who live in Ottawa, that this extreme difference exists. I'm sure you all have explanations for it.

When we showed this to the Ontario Provincial Police people who helped us in the report and they looked at the scatter on this chart of all these communities, they said none of this surprised them; they know what those communities are like. As most of you who live here know, the crime rate in Vanier is substantially higher than in Kanata. So there's a very complex problem of social structures and what not that feeds into this.

The next chart is simply to try to convince the Government of Ontario that in the gradient in verbal skills, which folds into literacy, Ontario is not doing as well as Quebec and the three prairie provinces. We said “Mr. Harris, we need to figure out what those provinces are doing; maybe we should go down and talk to the Province of Quebec, because they're doing something better than we're doing on the literacy measurements.”

Those gradients are quite important, because they tell you a great deal about performance of a society. We would argue that a large part of that slope in that gradient is actually being set by the preschool period, so this becomes extremely important in understanding that.

What causes all this? We went to the national longitudinal study and we managed to get them to pull the data to find out what are “children in difficulty”. These are children who are low on the verbal skills score, are poor in the mathematics score, and show behavioural problems. So you have three measurements that fold into this.

We were trying to find out, first of all, whether it was just a poverty question, and you can see from the earlier data that we realized this really wasn't a poverty question. We asked them to run the data by families in terms of quartiles of income. In the upper SES group, the highest, Margaret McCain's group, 21% of the children are in difficulty; in the lowest, 35% of the children are in difficulty. So any solution must be some form of universal program if you're really going to address the fundamental question. Indeed, the burden of children in difficulty, their numbers are far larger in the middle class in total numbers than at the bottom end of the scale. I hope everybody sees that, in terms of the importance of the problem and our country.

What we did find, using the national longitudinal study data, is that parenting was a bigger driver of this gradient than income. So one of our conclusions is that it's probably better to at least invest some of the money in early childhood into creation of the institutional structures for children and parents, and our report says something about that.

Given all that, we then had to figure out what should be done. We knew about Quebec, which had been good and wise and moved ahead of the rest of the country, in our judgment, on this. We knew the situation from the World Bank, the World Bank for Latin America, and some of the British data. So we put all of the material together and said the evidence in the studies indicates very strongly that you need early child development programs. You notice that we do not use the term “day care”, because that implies babysitting, and besides, we want this to start much earlier as a program.

Parenting is important because children are with their parents the bulk of the time. So parent interaction with children, particularly in the very critical first year to year and a half, is obviously hugely important in brain development. Home visits can help, and the earlier this is started, the better the outcome.

Putting that all together and looking at some stuff that has come out of the United Kingdom... This is the Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health Report. For those of you who are here from the Ministry of Health, I hope you pick up on the inequalities in health document, because it says “One of the most critical periods to improve the health of the population is to invest in the early years”. That's their assessment of the linkage between early life and health risks.

The other quote is from the World Bank, and I should say for a moment here that both the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank... The Inter-American Development Bank is the bank for Latin America and is led by a leading economist who has come to the conclusion that if the economies of Latin America are to grow, they have to get rid of the crime and violence in large cities. He believes that the only way they can do that is by starting to invest in the early childhood needs of their communities, which is an extremely impressive argument. He argues that this has to be a high priority for all those countries.

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So our humble statement to the Premier of Ontario is we mustn't let those countries get ahead of us in solving the problem, because we have problems in our own jurisdiction. I would say that we have problems nationally that we should address in this country.

The final little chart for you is the framework of our recommendation. It's basically cast in a slightly different way from the structure in Quebec, but the similarity if you read through the document is awfully clear.

We said source of brain stimulation, and it argues that it's two-generational. There's the stimulation the parent gives to the child and then there's the stimulation children give to each other with other adults who can be educators.

So we structured the early child development and parenting programs to focus on the fact that you have two generational impacts in brain development. Then we tried to fold all of the arrangements that exist into one structure. So parent support, including non-parental care arrangements, which you could call day care if you wanted to, should all be folded into this kind of structure.

We became very tough about play-based learning because when we looked at the educational curriculum from the Ministry of Education it was far too didactic. Remember, play-based learning is driving multiple sensing pathways, and that's extremely important.

So you learn what we call the cognitive weight of numbers between four and six and you do that by play. If you just want to think about it, if you have three balls in this hand and three balls in that hand, you're driving sensing pathways of weight, touch, vision, and sound, and when you move one over to here you have a difference. It appears that basically sets the capacity for advanced mathematics later on in life, and if you miss it between four and six it's very hard to build it back in later on. We argued to Mr. Harris that if you want to improve the mathematics scores, you cannot do it unless you make this kind of investment.

Prenatal and post-natal supports we believe should start earlier. Nutrition programs... And one of the things we said to the province of Ontario is that you have healthy babies, healthy children. Spotting moms at risk at birth and putting them into a program, you tend to label them. Wouldn't it be far better to encourage them to go into these kinds of centres so they can work with other people? And we believe that can work.

The last chart I'll skip. It's just the mathematics scores for the rest of the country.

So there is a set of eleven recommendations to the Premier of Ontario. He said he wants to act on them. The proof of the pudding will be, if he's re-elected, whether he will. If he does move forward with these, then you will have two provinces in Canada that will have marched ahead, I think, basically within the same context, and the trick will be for the federal government to figure out what its partnership or role should be with this.

The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Mustard. That's a great opening.

[Translation]

We will go right away to our witnesses from Quebec and once again welcome Daniel Tremblay, Professor at the Université du Québec à Hull, and Jocelyne Tougas, child care consultant.

Mr. Daniel Tremblay (Individual Presentation): [Professor, Université du Québec (Hull)] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My presentation could be called "Renewing Policies to Eliminate Poverty Among Children and Youth in Quebec". Since we are talking about renewal, I would like to first try to put things in context and give you some background on the development of Quebec's policy on child poverty in the 90s.

At the beginning of the decade, Quebec launched a major reform of its health and social services system. The document I am holding was the basis of that reform. If I go back to the early 1990s, it is because the main thrust of Quebec's policy to eliminate child poverty comes from that time, and this 1991 report started the process. The report is entitled Un Québec fou de ses enfants; it was written by a task force on youth that was chaired by Camille Bouchard, and it was very widely publicized. Camille Bouchard made a lot of hay with it and was very much in the public eye for several years in Quebec. If there is one government public report or study that got a lot of coverage in Quebec, it was this one. It was well received by many groups in Quebec society and it laid the groundwork for Quebec's policy on the fight against poverty.

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In 1992, the Quebec government launched its reform of the health and social services system and set out its policy on health and welfare, of which its initiative on child poverty was a major thrust.

There were two other aspects, which are more directly tied to the presentation I am making today. One was the income security reform that led last year to the adoption of Bill 186, Quebec's new income security legislation. I have distributed to you a summary of Quebec's new family policy, which includes programs to reduce child poverty in Quebec. Implementation, which began in 1997, is being phased in and is not yet complete.

The first basic principle underlying Quebec's family policy, and which I will come back to a number of times, is that it must create conditions that promote both family life and labour force participation. It is important to stress that in order to fight poverty, it is essential to create conditions that support both family life and employment. We basically want parents, usually single mothers, not to have to choose between family life and career. Ideally, of course, parents should be able to choose both at the same time. That is the fundamental principle behind this policy. To forget that is to forget the basis of the policy.

The second principle, which comes from Camille Bouchard's report entitled Un Québec fou de ses enfants, states that primary responsibility for children's well-being lies with their parents. These parents, however, need to be given an environment that allows them to fulfil that responsibility.

The last principle, which flows from the previous one, is that the State has a very important, even essential, role to play in supporting parents so that they can take care of their children.

Those are the basic principles underlying Quebec's new family policy, which has three main components. The first, which I will spend the most time on in my short presentation today, is the integrated child allowance. The second component of the policy is perhaps the most widely known and discussed; it deals with early childhood education and child care services. I will not say much about that because I believe that Ms. Tougas, who is more familiar with it than I am, will be presenting it in detail. The last component of the Quebec policy is the parental insurance program or, if you prefer, the parental leave program, about which I will say a few words.

As I have said, the child care component is the best known part of the policy because this idea of child care at a cost of $5 a day for families was unheard of and gained wide support in Quebec. That is probably why it is the area that has been talked about most.

We are in the process of implementing the parental insurance component of the Quebec policy. As you no doubt know, implementation of this part of the Quebec policy is being delayed in part by negotiations between the federal and provincial governments. It would appear that there is still no agreement on certain aspects of the funding for this parental leave, which includes maternal, paternal and adoption leave, etc. Discussions are focussing on, among other things, what level of net income replacement should be provided to parents taking advantage of this leave and whether the benefits would be taxable or not.

The first component, which I would like to deal with at greater length today, is the integrated child allowance. This is an important program that replaces three programs that used to exist in Quebec.

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Before the integrated child allowance was created in 1997, we had the Quebec family allowance—which must not be confused with the former federal family allowance—for young children and an allowance for newborn children, which was, of course, more of a policy to increase birth rates than a family policy. Those three programs were replaced by the integrated child allowance, which targets government efforts more than the previous programs did. It focusses more on low-income families on welfare and low-income working families.

The integrated child allowance is aimed at reducing poverty and, as I said earlier, one of its most important aspects is that it tries to help parents, including single parents, to enter the labour force or to remain in it and to make them less dependent on social programs, including welfare in particular.

That is why I emphasized a few minutes ago that this is both a family policy and very much a policy to promote employment and entry into the labour force. If that is not understood, an important aspect of the Quebec policy is missed.

Somewhat more concretely, I could say that when the integrated child allowance was established, the intention was to send a message that was identical to the one that was aimed at by the youth task force: children are very important. Since they are so important and they represent the future of society, special efforts should be made to help them. How has that been done in Quebec?

Income security or assistance of last recourse—welfare, if you prefer—which is intended for adults, has been separated from the efforts being made to help children. The integrated child allowance, as its name indicates, is aimed essentially at children. Adults receiving welfare continue to receive welfare, but the proportion of their benefits that used to be earmarked for child care and children's expenses is now paid to them in the form of the integrated child allowance. In order to make a clear distinction between the two programs, the government has put the management of the integrated child allowance under the Régie des rentes du Québec, and not under the Ministry of Social Security, to make it clear that these are two different programs and to focus on reducing child poverty. This concern is also illustrated by the fact that welfare benefits for adults are taxable in Quebec, while the integrated child allowance is not.

Over the past few minutes, I have made a link between welfare and the integrated child allowance. It should be pointed out that the integrated child allowance is not intended only for families on welfare, but for all low-income families. The aim was to try to eliminate the stereotypes applied to people on welfare and ensure that the most disadvantaged people in society are brought into the Quebec labour force. That brings us back to the famous starting point, which is the principle that family priorities must be reconciled with employment priorities in Quebec.

The policy really takes into account the realities of today's families, in particular single-parent families.

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Although I have only a few figures here with me, I can tell you that if we take into account that two thirds of mothers whose youngest child is under the age of three are currently in the work force in Quebec and that in 70% of cases both spouses in a two-parent family with young children are working as well, there is no doubt that employment is part of the current environment. The Quebec policy is truly trying to come to terms with that reality. Up to this point, I have been describing the family policy.

I would now like to make a few comments about the policy. To begin with, Quebec's family policy, in part because of its initiatives to reduce poverty, is based more on a European model than a North American one. According to what I know of policies in other Canadian provinces and in the United States, I believe that the spirit of Quebec's family policy is more in line with what exists in Sweden, France, Denmark, Holland and some other countries.

This is evident in one component that I did not intend to describe in detail, but which I will nonetheless explain briefly: the parental insurance or the famous parental leave component. This particular issue is under discussion by the federal and Quebec governments. The goal is to have the income replacement level for families taking parental or maternity leave to be around 75%. Under the employment insurance program, as you know, the benefits are approximately 55 to 60%. In a number of European countries, the income replacement rates for families in an equivalent situation are often 80% and sometimes even 100%. You will therefore understand why I said that this system was based more on a European model than a North American one. That does not mean that it is better or worse. It is only an observation.

The Chairman: It is better.

Mr. Daniel Tremblay: It is an observation, in any case.

I will try to highlight a few positive and a few negative aspects of the policy and indicate some of the criticism that is sometimes heard.

I will begin with the more positive aspect. Since the early 1990s, Quebec has made a great effort, especially through policy renewal, to implement an integrated and coherent family policy that covers child care—which Ms. Tougas will be speaking to you about—and financial benefits in the form of an integrated child allowance and parental insurance. These complementary aspects make it a truly coherent and integrated policy. It is an interesting approach, in view of the fact that the family, as we know, has changed a great deal as an institution over the past few decades. It is an interesting but substantial challenge to try to come up with a coherent policy to deal with that reality.

A second interesting aspect is that the policy targets low-income families in particular, without focussing only on families that receive welfare benefits. Low-income families can also be families in which the parents work but make a relatively low income.

A third very positive aspect is that the policy promotes options for parents. Up to now—you know this as well as I do—parents, especially women, have very often had to choose between raising a family and pursuing a career, or make sacrifices on one side or the other. The Quebec policy goes some way to try to end that dilemma, which may be an ambitious principle. The aim is to enable Quebec families to have children and raise them in the knowledge that they can meet the children's needs, while continuing, as far as possible, to work and move ahead in the workforce.

The last aspect that seems to me to be important is that the policy really emphasizes the well-being of children. By creating, among other things, the integrated child allowance, Quebec has taken a worthwhile step.

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With respect to criticisms of the policy, a number of observers have said that targeting low-income families threatens the universality of the programs. The Quebec government is of the view that some aspects of its policy remain universal, since, for example, the child tax credit has been maintained for all families.

The second aspect is a more practical one. Child care services have been established, and perhaps Ms. Tougas will be talking to you about that later. The problem is that, as the policy is being implemented, there is a shortage of spaces. Implementation has taken place very quickly and certain difficulties have arisen in the effort to create additional spaces, but that problem is likely temporary.

The third characteristic of the reform is that it places a great deal of emphasis on employment and work. Some people feel that that is being done at the cost of parents being able to spend time with their children. It is a philosophical question.

Here is a fourth criticism. Those of you who read Le Devoir may have seen the article this morning criticizing the Quebec government for making choices that may in fact worsen the poverty of Quebec children in the future. The Quebec government responds by saying that the integrated child allowance is one component of its policy and that conclusions can be drawn on the basis of that one component, but if all three components that I have identified are taken into account, families do not necessarily lose out.

The final criticism that could be made deals with the definition of children's basic needs and the level that should be established for them.

In closing, I will mention that a report was submitted in February to the French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin. It is therefore a very recent report. The author, Béatrice Majnoni d'Intignano, carried out an in-depth study and found that when women are offered effective ways of reconciling employment and child care, they choose to have more children, which is extremely interesting. In other words, by creating good conditions, not only do we resolve the famous dilemma of women having to choose between having children and being in the workforce, but women would choose to have more children. As far as I know, this is the first time that such a thing has been demonstrated. Given the concern over the low birth rate and the funding of pension plans in the decades ahead, it is a useful thing to know.

Thank you for listening.

The Chairman: Thank you. That was very interesting. Do you have the title of the report presented to Jospin?

Mr. Daniel Tremblay: I don't have it here. But I can find it if you wish.

The Chairman: Perhaps you could send it to our researcher.

Mr. Daniel Tremblay: Yes.

The Chairman: Ms. Tougas.

Ms. Jocelyne Tougas (Individual Presentation): [Child Care Consultant] Good afternoon. I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to the committee on a subject of extreme importance to me. I've invested a great deal of my professional life in this issue.

Before addressing the day care situation in Quebec, I would like to emphasize a few things Dr. Mustard highlighted, for instance the fact that quality day care is important for all children and not only those at risk. It's true that we must invest in day care and in early intervention for children at risk, but it would be a mistake for the government to only provide for high-risk kids, despite the program's usefulness and value. There are several reasons for this.

All young children, be they rich or poor, at risk or not, normal or handicapped, can benefit from a stimulating environment which will foster their growth. Good quality day care for youngsters is expensive, more so than bad day care. It would therefore be counterproductive to exclude middle-class kids from good day care, which is too expensive and because the government can't afford it, because they don't come from low-income families. So if the middle-class kids had to go to low-quality day care, they might develop more slowly from an emotional, social and even intellectual point of view, which is exactly what we don't want poor kids to go through, as Dr. Mustard just said.

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Therefore, the principle of universal access is also a basic principle of equality. If society is to benefit from a good day care network, it must be accessible to all.

I will now talk about the Quebec model. The Government of Quebec began restructuring day care in 1997, and it based its model on the important principle of accessibility, as well as those of affordability and quality. As Mr. Tremblay said, day care was placed at the core of family policy, and it was linked with both the integrated child allowance and the parental insurance program.

The reorganization of day care services in Quebec was based on what are called the centres de la petite enfance, or early childhood centres. These new non-profit centres were created from existing day care centres and home care agencies. The mandate of these centres is to offer a range of day care and educational services for children aged 0 to 12 years old, irrespective of their parents' type of employment. One day, the government would like to diversify the system by providing pre-school and evening and weekend day care.

To ensure the system's affordability, it was decided that it would cost $5 a day to put a child in day care, as you know. The system is being phased in gradually. The program began in 1997, and any family could sign up their child for a regulated day care space for $5 a day. However, the program is so popular and the need so great that waiting lists are getting longer every day. According to a recent study by the Ministry of Families, the family policy has led half of the parents whose children under five are not in day care to register for an educational service for youngsters. So you see that when parents have this kind of opportunity and the means to pay for it, they recognize that it is important to put their kids in a stimulating environment which fosters their development. It often depends on whether they can afford it.

But Quebec's race towards the zero deficit—yes, we are also racing towards a zero deficit—and significant cuts in federal transfers to the provinces and territories, mainly explains why some parents and children now have to wait for a $5 place in a regulated daycare in Quebec.

If you want to find out more about the measures put in place and about the technique and the way the daycare system works, you can consult a document which I gave you called Un instantané de la réforme en cours au Québec en matière de services éducatifs à la petite enfance. That's where you'll find what you need to know. I won't read it to you.

However, since I've been fighting for this issue for a long time, I would like to come back to the repercussions federal cutbacks in social transfers to the provinces and territories have had on day care in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada.

According to the Quebec government, 175,000 places are needed—we now have about 92,000—to meet the needs of families needing day care. That is probably a very conservative estimate. This is the area which has been affected the most by federal cutbacks to social transfers. A province like Quebec, which knows that educational services are important to help youngsters, to foster the growth of children, to fight poverty, to fight for women's equality and to help them get jobs, and to train workers—a province like Quebec, therefore, which is determined to act, has had to scale back the implementation of its program and even to renounce some of its components. You mentioned parental leave. It's true that we can't seem to agree on that, but there is also a lack of funding, and federal cutbacks have had an impact.

• 1625

So, Quebec had to renounce certain components of its family policy because it could not access the Canada Assistance Plan, which was cut, and because of the cutbacks in education, health and social transfers. Thank God all these cutbacks did not lead the government to cancel its strategy altogether.

But other provinces have not reacted like Quebec. Just look at what's happening in Ontario and New Brunswick, where Conservative governments are literally dismantling day care networks which took years to set up and in which so much money and energy were invested.

Let me give you an example. In New Brunswick, regulated day care centres have not received a penny since 1997, except for some money earmarked for obviously high-risk cases. We toured New Brunswick and were able to see for ourselves the state of some of that province's day care centres. Because there is no money, the quality of day care has shamefully plummeted. Day care centres are becoming increasingly outdated. Quality personnel is leaving in droves. Education programs are weak; there aren't enough toys, the paint is peeling from the walls, and so on. It's a sad sight.

In Ontario, there is so little funding that day care spaces are being cut every month; they can't be sustained. Everything is being deregulated and the adult-to-child ratio is increasing. Training standards are falling. Schools don't have to provide day care space anymore. In Ontario, the market will determine the future of day care. That's the Ontario model.

Now, these governments are blaming a good deal of the problem on Ottawa. Is Ottawa to blame?

You may be surprise to hear me say that it is not that simple. When a government has the political will to implement a forward-looking social policy, as does Quebec, it finds a way not only to give direction, but also to spend a good deal of public money.

Of course, if the federal government fully lived up to its responsibility towards children, women and Canadian families, Quebec could do much more. The federal government should begin by reinstating the funding which was there before the devastating cutbacks, before the Canada Assistance Plan was axed, when over $300 million was earmarked for day care, and before the creation of the Canada Health and Social Transfer for health and social programs. But the government should not only put back what it took away. It should recognize that investing in the early years is an excellent long-term investment for Canada. It would give more money to provinces and territories willing to create a good day care system.

Gordon Cleveland and Michael Krashinsky, two economists at the University of Toronto, did a revealing study entitled The advantages and costs linked to good daycare services: economic justification for government investment in our young children. The advantages of good educational services for young children greatly outweigh its costs. In fact, the researchers found that for each dollar the government invested in day care and early childhood services, the value for children, families and society was doubled.

I appropriate their conclusion. It is imperative that State- subsidized day care be a government priority. When governments decide on how to spend the limited tax dollars at their disposal, they must keep day care at the forefront of their priorities.

• 1630

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Ms. Tougas.

[English]

I'm aware of the fact that we've had three very rich presentations, and also that time is limited. I know that Dr. Mustard has to be out of here at five o'clock—is that it, roughly?

Dr. Fraser Mustard: How long does it take me to get over to the main building?

The Chairman: It depends on how fast you are. Five minutes.

Dr. Fraser Mustard: I think I should try to be there by five.

The Chairman: Okay, seven minutes.

Therefore, what I'm going to ask members to do is in our first round, particularly if you have any questions for Dr. Mustard, start with one question per questioner, so that we can get in more people. I would also remind committee members that after our guests depart, if we have some time, we were hoping to get at least some initial reactions as a group to the work plan. I know there were people who wished to comment on that, and we had suggested that people hang in until 5.30 if that were possible.

Mr. Lowther, go to it.

Mr. Eric Lowther (Calgary Centre, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There's so much information, it's hard to know where to start.

Because we're pressed for time, I would ask the witnesses, and probably particularly Dr. Mustard... We talk about this period of time in a child's life when they're very receptive—zero to six years, or zero to three years—the critical time, when they need to be stimulated and all that good stuff. Largely, from what I've been exposed to, we talk about academics there. For example, if language development is good at this time, their academic future will be strong.

The other part of this is the child care issue and all that. What is the significance of the whole bonding thing at that age? I can remember stuff I was exposed to years ago that said how critical that was, if there was a separation, or different caregivers every other week. Isn't that even more important than the academic side of it, or the mental stimulation side?

Dr. Fraser Mustard: You've asked a pretty fundamental question, and I'll try to be brief. You have billions of nerve cells in your head, and how they connect with each other for the complex functions you and I engage in is enormously important. You only have a limited number of sensing pathways, and all of us deal with how those sensing pathways operate—our anger, our frustration, etc., are driven by them. So the first thing you have to think a little bit about is that what's happening in those very early periods is the wiring of the connections among all your nerves that drive your sensing pathways. It's not academic; it's pretty well a survival existence, to be blunt.

What you sense, then, has to be transferred into the higher levels of function of the brain—arousal, emotions, cognition, etc. It looks like the wiring into emotions and arousal has the same kind of plasticity control, if I can use that term, as the wiring of the sensing pathways. So we now know that about one-third of women, in particular, brought up in dysfunctional households where there's just simply verbal abuse between the parents fairly continuously run the risk of being depressed in their thirties. That's a consequence of this extraordinary early period.

I hope that analogy gets across to you. It's far more than academic; it's a very fundamental capacity. As Richard Tremblay of the University of Montreal has shown, when a child who's brought up in a family that doesn't give that child good interaction and boundaries during the very critical five years in which the socialization that is to control the normal aggressive behaviour takes place hits the school system, that male will be dysfunctional. A high proportion will drop out of the school system by the age of 13. And we know about 30% of them will be delinquent by the age of 13, so there's a huge criminal problem that routes into this whole business.

You have to think of it in a different kind of context. So if I switch you down to rats... You're not a rat, obviously; none of us are. Nevertheless, rats have neurons, and neurons, like all biological cells, tend to have the same basic functions. If a newborn rat pup is not licked by its mother, which is touch, the cortex of that rat will be about 50% of the thickness it should be, because it has inadequate wiring.

We have reasonable evidence from human studies that children who are neglected in that first year will not get adequate wiring, and touch is one of the drivers. I won't take you through all the literature that is in our report about kids who get into non-parental care where there's total neglect. They're in trouble. But kids who are put into non-parental care where there's good support have no problem.

• 1635

So the biological parent is not crucial, if I can get this across to you in a sense, but the care, as you emphasized, has to be extremely good. So putting children into orphanages as they did in Romania... The children who were in those orphanages for long periods of time before the regime broke down and then were taken out for adoption in British Columbia are having one hell of a job developing, whereas the children who were picked up within two to three months are doing quite well in those families.

So that early period is very crucial. The family support systems that Quebec has developed I think are very wise and very sound. But having flexibility so people can be part of the labour force and have good support for a child to develop is the crucial challenge for our society for the future.

Mr. Eric Lowther: But in the context of the child itself, it's this whole cuddling, bonding, and consistent caregiver issue. What you're telling me is consistent with what I heard some years back: that if there's a whole bunch of subtle communication things that go on between a young child and a caregiver that are non-verbal—hand signals, eye signals, all that stuff—a trust is built up there. Then if that caregiver changes, that trust is broken down and will have to be re-established. And then it changes again. I remember that talk now in the context of later psychotic behaviour, where these kids can't even trust any more. These individuals don't have the ability to trust. How important is the consistency of the caregiver in those critical times?

Dr. Fraser Mustard: Let me put it this way: all the evidence is that when you set up early child development centres that involve the parents and that have more than one caregiver involved in them, if they're high quality, the outcomes are excellent. Indeed, if you do it early enough, you actually shift IQ performance.

Mr. Eric Lowther: I'm sorry, I missed part of that.

Dr. Fraser Mustard: All the evidence that looks at the story and indirectly gets at your question shows that when you set up early child development centres beginning, hopefully, from conception to when the child is born and beyond and that have good caregiver interactions with the parents and with the child—picking up from the points you made—the outcome for the child is excellent and you can actually shift IQ performance. If you don't put that kind of support in for the parent and the child, you won't get the same gain—and this is for all social classes, by the way—as you get when you do that.

So it's wrong to think you have to leave women in the home with the child, if I can be blunt. The issue is that you must set up a system that recognizes the biology of the development of the brain. Even John Godfrey could be a good caregiver for your children if you got him at the right time and trained him properly. You might not like the bonding, but that's all right.

The Chairman: Madame Gagnon.

[Translation]

Ms. Christiane Gagnon (Québec, BQ): Mr. Mustard, you said that it would be better if educators visited the family or if there were centres where a family could meet with an educator. I don't know if such centres exist in Quebec, where there is a relationship between the educator, the parent and the child, to make sure the child, as you said, receives a consistent message.

If such a program were created, wouldn't that represent intrusion by the government in to one's private life? I am not saying that's a bad thing. We want kids to be stimulated as much as possible, but there is a danger that the State would intrude on the policy of the family. Could it be perceived as State intrusion into family life? That also has to be considered.

[English]

Dr. Fraser Mustard: Your question is sound. We handled this in the following manner. First of all, we found that in our visits to communities there were lots of what you and I would call middle-class families where the parents were concerned about their role and they needed support. They felt isolated because of the way the world's working today. So we found that in many of what we will call early child development parenting centres, the parents actually were involved. It's like the old nursery school structure. Then what we found is that many of these parents themselves became involved as auxiliary teachers in these centres. In other words, they picked up skills in interacting with their children.

I must say, to my family's chagrin, I suppose, when I realize the point you're making about how you interact with children in the first year, I don't think I did that very well as a father, to be honest.

• 1640

What these good units can do is get the parents to understand how to do that. So in organizing this, we argue for the organization to be grassroots up—that is, from the community up. We suggest community boards to put it into place, and we suggest that they must be exquisitely parent-sensitive so you're not imposing anything on anybody. It's optional, that's very important, but you must make sure there are no financial barriers to access if you're putting the system into place. And we also felt they should be designed to take into account linguistic and cultural characteristics of family units, we should not impose a cookie-cutter solution, that it would be wrong for the government to try to dump it on families, etc.

Our sense, in going to all kinds of communities in Ontario, including aboriginal communities, is there is a high receptivity to things that are developed this way. So the problem for government is to find a way to work with community groups to do this. And when we were asked about how you do it in Ontario, our weak way out, which follows a bit of the Quebec principle but is not quite as bureaucratic, is that the Government of Ontario should work with communities to set up community boards, who have the responsibility to work with groups to put these in place sensitive to families. That's extremely important. You mustn't impose it.

As you correctly pointed out, you have a huge number of women in the labour force, and there's no way chauvinistic males like myself are going to shove them back in the home, because nobody will give me a military force strong enough to put them back in the home. The women would get me first. Because of that, why don't employers start to work on developing a strategy? We approached one man who runs 90 stores in Quebec and Ontario over a year ago and talked to him about the problem. He said he didn't like governments taxing and making bad use of his money, but he wouldn't mind an incentive that gave him a tax credit for building early child development centres for his own employees and other employees. We could work together to do that.

So we've argued that Mr. Harris' government should exploit that, because we do think there are private sector people in communities who are concerned about these issues who will come in.

We hope this will tend to handle the questions you've asked, that it will be sensitive to people, and that it won't be imposed by some bureaucracy-creating cookie-cutter solutions, but the government will set up the broad standards and what not for doing this.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Sir, I must give the floor to another member. Otherwise, we might be here for a very long time.

[English]

I see next on my list Madam Kraft Sloan.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan (York North, Lib.): Thank you.

In reference to the chart you have that looks at the socio-economic gradient for low-receptive vocabulary for children aged four and five, this is something you were able to glean from the national longitudinal study. I'm wondering if you have any information on what this chart would have looked like say 10 or 20 years ago, or 40 or 50 years ago. How has this changed over time? If this is a snapshot of children aged four and five, then what are the sources for this? When did the elements that affect this start to kick in? Was it when the mother was pregnant? Was it 20 years before that, when the mother was developing herself as a child? I'm wondering how this curve or slope has shifted over time. Are children more receptive or less receptive at that age? And where do you start to begin to understand where the source is or the roots of it? I know you have a very complicated analysis that goes into this, but maybe we can look at government policy at that time and see what was going in the communities and homes, etc.

Dr. Fraser Mustard: I think your question was our frustration. We knew that to convince a government that is to the right of centre that it was an important issue, we had to have information that would confront them with the magnitude of the problems in Ontario. So, like you, we said let's go and extract the data. But what's happened historically doesn't exist. So there's a thing the federal government could do: make sure we create good data systems that we can use for comparison purposes.

Fortunately, we had the help of Statistics Canada. I haven't taken you through the birth-weight data. We then did birth weight by community census tracks. We couldn't do it individually. You saw the mathematics before between Vanier and Kanata. Vanier has the highest low birth-weight rate of the regions we looked at, and much higher than Kanata. And since brain wiring occurs in utero, I suspect that may be a factor, but I can't tell you that it is. We suspect it is.

• 1645

We do not have longitudinal studies that allow us to link verbal skill development for ages two, three, four, and five. The Swedes do. My suspicion is that the complexing is beginning extremely early in the first year. That's why I mentioned the analogy that when you're reading to children and holding them, you're driving a whole bunch of sensing pathways that are probably integrating other crucial functions in the brain that are absolutely essential.

So my sense is that this is beginning along that cycle, but we can't prove it from our data. I would say the most critical period is from conception to age three. That's very powerful, and it's harder to change things around later on.

[Translation]

The Chairman: We have three witnesses, and while you are all still here, I would like to tell you how the experts from Quebec reacted to Mr. Mustard's proposal for the Ontario government. This proposal includes day care, as well as parental education services and other things. Have both provinces exchanged ideas? Does Ontario's proposal to create a system of community centres to promote the development of youngsters and to help parents contain a principle which could be shared through the social union, for instance? Is the potential there for a national program, a blueprint for all of Canada?

Ms. Jocelyne Tougas: When people working in day care define the services, there definition is the same as that provided by Mr. Mustard. These are early childhood development services and not only day care services. The french word is unfortunately very limiting, but we are not talking about babysitting; it's not early education, but stimulation, a presence, development and love. You shouldn't complicate things unnecessarily. The report talks about good quality educational day care services.

What is extraordinary in this type of report, is that it is the only way to convince people who need to be convinced because they don't know these things intuitively. Everyone here who is a parent knows intuitively that if their children are well looked after, they will thrive. If there were qualified educators to look after our children, we would not have the problems we are dealing with and we would be happier at work.

I believe we do have something in common. The difference is that in Ontario, you are stuck with a right-of-centre government and the basic philosophy of such a program must not only be opportunistic, but must also have deep roots. On behalf of my colleagues and the children of Ontario, I hope that the humanist or social democratic roots in Ontario are deep enough to make it work.

As for a national program, I would rather not risk speaking to that issue. It's enough to aim for a comprehensive system in Quebec for now.

The Chairman: Within a federation, people can find inspiration from different models.

[English]

Dr. Mustard, I don't know if you have anything to add to that.

Dr. Fraser Mustard: I'm going to have to go over to the other place, finance, and argue that they should finance all this for you.

We found to our chagrin that the public service in Ontario was not as knowledgeable about Quebec as it should be. I don't know how you get governments in different provinces to talk with each other, but it seems to me that's extremely important.

• 1650

However, because of the organization I had an association with, I latched onto Camille Bouchard, who you referred to substantially and who I've worked with over time, and of course Richard Tremblay.

I should tell all of you that the reason I can't give you a French translation of this document is because it contains technical language. The translators who were being used in Ontario were inadequate. When the head of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Marc Renaud, read the French translation, he said “You cannot let that go out. It would be a disgrace to Quebec, because it's so poorly written for what's in your document.” So I've been contacting Richard Tremblay to have a proper editing done of the document.

At a mundane operating level, Mr. Chairman, I've had to get a lot of cooperation from Quebec to get this thing into place and we've benefited from all the work that has gone on there. The question of the interchange between the governments is a more serious one.

I must leave you, gentlemen.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Maria, I'm sorry one of our witnesses is leaving, but two remain.

Ms. Maria Minna (Beaches—East York, Lib.): Dr. Mustard, I'll be very quick.

Dr. Fraser Mustard: Okay, I'll take one.

Ms. Maria Minna: You were talking about the grassroots and the zero-to-three ratio and that there would be a community board established. With the exception of the rural communities, which are quite different and need a different kind of a response, in the urban centres we already have elementary schools. We have all kinds of projects under CAPC, and free nutritional programs, parental support centres, all kinds of things.

What we had started to do in Ontario at one time, and it seems to have died out, was to make the elementary school itself part of the community. It would be very much informed about which families were well off, who did what, who worked, what languages were spoken, what cultures, what have you. If every elementary school were to have a development centre attached, which would include obviously not only child care, child development, but also the prenatal and all the programs, which we now have dispersed, in the communities, then that in itself would be one way to start, obviously with a local community board already.

I've been very supportive of this idea and I have been trying to push it for some time. I just want your reaction to it.

Dr. Fraser Mustard: Your question is right. We have tried many strategies. We found general hostility to the attitudes of school boards to this subject, partly because of the warfare between teachers' groups. I do know school boards in the States, particularly in Miami, are working with the United Way and it is actually doing a superb job of integrating all of this. So it's doable.

When we gave the recommendation to the government about setting up a board for early child development, they said that one of our options was the school board. One of our options was the municipal government. One of our options was a neutral board. In Metro Toronto the advice is a neutral board, please; they don't want to get caught in the other warfare. So it's optional at this stage, but certainly school sites are an obvious place to do these things. So are business sites.

One of the many remarkable programs we saw was in the South Grey farming community. The largest town is Markdale, with about 1,000 people. They run an early child development and parenting centre program. They are using CAPC money, provincial money and other money, and they launder all the bloody program money to run a complete program. They get around all the provincial warfare. They run a unique hub and satellite system. It really shows what you can do, powerfully.

If I were in government, I'd think about how you'd do that and about how you'd stop the bureaucracy from interfering with this marvellous woman's work. We describe her in this report in some detail.

So I don't think everything is black in Ontario. The premier's instinct is that he has to do something here, if I can be honest about it. Whether he can overcome this other force is another question.

The Chairman: Dr. Fraser, go get the money.

Dr. Fraser Mustard: We'll keep working your committee.

The Chairman: Dr. Bennett, have you some questions for our visitors?

Ms. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's, Lib.): Just as Dr. Mustard is leaving, I remember a speech he gave probably ten years ago that said that the ultimate success of any community was based on the health of its three-year-olds. In terms of around the world and throughout the generations, I just wonder if we could perhaps ask to get that background material.

The Chairman: You'd find quite a lot in the report.

• 1655

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: Good.

I want to ask about universality and whether it's women who work or women immigrants who happen to be staying home and who need a bit of help with another language in helping their children to get ready for school, or whether it's the children's storefront, where you actually end up being able to help everybody...

If we add up all the working mothers and we add up all the day care slots and the so-called nannies submitting tax receipts, there's a huge gap there. We actually don't know who's looking after these kids, because they're being paid under the table and it isn't really valued work.

Are you doing anything in Quebec to raise the level of childhood development and caregiving to children to get those nannies or the neighbour next door or the people who really are still just putting the kids in front of the television and who are looking after too many kids... How do we tap into that? How do we begin to value the work and not only do the parental resource thing but also actually help the nannies or the neighbours who don't have the skills, those who are doing a great amount of the child rearing invisibly?

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Tougas: Quebec's policy is rather exceptional because when parents were told they could get a spot in a regulated, visible and quality day care for five dollars a day, a huge number of parents pulled their kids from unregulated child care situations and put them into the regulated centres. This proves that under the old system they simply could not afford regulated day care. They did not choose to put their kids with a neighbour who had no training or to hire a young girl to babysit, but they could not afford to do otherwise.

We realized that Quebec policy had encouraged parents to put their kids in the care of other families. But now, the former at- home caregivers, who work under the table, are applying to early childhood centres to be recognized, to continue their training and to receive their certification so that the parents whose children used to be in their care can now get day care for five dollars. If affordable day care is offered, parents can choose to put their children in a regulated environment. It's incentive, and that's the first aspect.

The other aspect is to improve working conditions of care- givers who work in day care centres so that their work becomes more highly regarded. There's now a movement in Quebec towards this goal; unionized day cares are fighting for it. In British Columbia, care-givers are also on strike. It can happen on many fronts.

[English]

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: In terms of the regulations, is it something you could eventually even see apprenticing? If you had good centres where you were bringing these people out from their homes, could you actually accredit them while they're looking after somebody?

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Tougas: Let me give you an overview of the situation. Early childhood centres in Quebec are now offering childcare services and day cares and in home-care situations, but we intend to diversify our services by creating resource centres for families and for unregulated home-based caregivers, otherwise known as drop-in centres. But for now, the Quebec model is limited to providing day care and homecare spaces for five dollars a day. However, the idea is to expand the early childhood centres in order to integrate every other service provided for children, including support for stay at-home mothers who want to look after their children until they are two years old.

• 1700

It's an open concept, but we must gradually phase it in because of a lack of funding. All the benchmarks for the expansion, which will eventually lead to a fully child-centred system, are in place. That is the philosophy underpinning the reform.

[English]

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: Is there any research on the drop-in centre and the way you can measure the improvement of kids from a drop-in centre? Is there research around this you could just give us or send us?

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Tougas: I can look, but there are very few studies on drop-in centres.

The Chairman: Very few.

[English]

Eric, do you have a second question? No.

Christiane.

[Translation]

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: I don't know if government members have any more questions. I am very familiar with the system and the policy regarding small children. May I explain the funding situation in terms of the Canada Health and Social Transfer? It's very painful. No, my criticism would be too political. I'll stick with the content.

When I'm in my riding, I can tell you that every community network is closely watching the Quebec government. Ms. Tougas might be here to tell us about it, but you can be sure that all the work being done to help families better educate and support their kids from a very young age and to help disadvantaged families is actually unfolding. We get feedback everyday.

In Quebec, at least in my riding and the adjoining ones, people are trying to figure out how they can be more efficient, how they can help low-income families more and provide them with more support. Parents want help, but there is not enough money for specialized educators. If Quebec suffers cutbacks, it cannot progress.

We often say that Quebeckers are different. Perhaps that's why we want to go even further. When $33 billion are cut from the Health and Social Transfer, it hurts Quebec because it can't implement its policy. Community networks don't complain to Ottawa; they complain to Quebec and demand higher salaries for their educators and better training for some day care workers. Quebec is feeling the pressure.

There is also the issue of taxes which go to Ottawa. With its federal spending power, the federal government must respect the Canada Health and Social Transfer agreements and reinstate them. Employment insurance has also pulled the rug out from underneath the feet of our low-income families, who don't have stable jobs. We don't have to complicate things unnecessarily with Quebec. We can be a model for other provinces and influence them, but you have to be careful what you offer Quebec in the social union. Thank you.

The Chairman: That was a good intervention.

[English]

We have a few minutes left before we say au revoir and turn our hand, at least for a first reaction, to the summary paper. Does anyone have questions for our guests?

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: I just want to know if they did anything differently for children with disabilities—to support the families who have kids with disabilities.

The Chairman: Do you mean different from the rest of Canada?

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: Yes. Do you have a special program to support the families and the parents?

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Tougas: Regarding day care services, it's not any different. There is additional funding for children with special needs, but we try to integrate these children in day care services. If their parents wish to send these children into day care, we have to accommodate them. Several provinces already do this, I don't think it's any different.

• 1705

The Chairman: Karen.

Mr. Daniel Tremblay: If I may—

The Chairman: Oh, excuse me.

Mr. Daniel Tremblay: I said a little earlier that the integrated child benefit replaced a number of programs which existed until 1997, including the family allowance, birth allowance and young children allowance programs. There is also the allowance for handicapped children; Quebec has chosen to retain it because it recognizes how hard it is to raise a handicapped child. The handicapped child allowance comes on top of the integrated allowance.

[English]

The Chairman: Do you have a last question, Karen?

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: First of all, I just wanted to applaud the fact that at the core of your family policy in Quebec, early childhood education and child care services are fundamental. I think in many places in this country, family policy has more to do with regressive sorts of measures. There has been a very enlightened, thoughtful, and medically based understanding of what is good for children.

I've had the opportunity, because of another project I'm on, to work with the Canadian Council of Provincial Children's Advocates, and I have two quick questions. I'm wondering what kind of work you do with the Quebec children's advocate, because she is very good. I'm wondering how some of the things you're doing interact, or how you can work together with what she's doing in trying to promote.

Secondly, I don't know how you got your politicians to support $5-a-day child care fees, because even just talking about a subsidized program would create such an incredible backlash. Even in my community, it would be very difficult to push an agenda like that. How did you get the $5-a-day fee? That's absolutely terrific.

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Tougas: It's not complicated. When you take all the financial envelopes which were invested haphazardly in various early childhood services fostering the development of children and you combine them into an integrated approach, you can save a huge amount of money. You can create miracles with that kind of money.

In Quebec there was a financial exemption program for low income parents whose children were in day care. That money was recovered. It was a reasoned approach which combined different envelopes, thus streamlining the system. However, it wasn't any cheaper, since new money had to be found to support it. You're right on that point. I believe it's a cultural and ideological issue. In Quebec, female ministers have held that portfolio for 25 years; they pressured the government relentlessly until they got what they wanted. You sometimes need a woman to fight for that kind of issue, and that's why it happened in Quebec. There may be a lesson in that.

The Chairman: Thank you. The idea of being there for 25 years is interesting. When women have succeeded one another as minister over 25 years, that's also quite interesting.

Mr. Daniel Tremblay: May I say something?

The Chairman: Yes, Mr. Tremblay.

Mr. Daniel Tremblay: I don't really believe in miracles, and that's why I wanted to say that the work done by women is crucial, and the report of the task force on children also had a big impact.

People like Camille Bouchard, or others, women or men, dedicated to this kind of task, with a flair for marketing and lots of potential, can move a government into action. If, on top of that, the government has social-democratic leanings and feels, as I previously said, that it has a duty to help families and parents, it certainly helps. There are no miracles and it is expensive, but that's a choice society makes.

The Chairman: You're lucky to have Camille Bouchard, and we're lucky to have Dr. Mustard.

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[English]

The open part of the meeting is over, and I would ask guests to leave us.

[Translation]

Thank you for your interesting and even inspiring presentations.

[English]

I would ask colleagues to stay for a minute to look at the plan. If you've lost it or didn't bring your homework with you... Everybody has it, okay.

We will now move in camera.

[Editor's Note: Proceedings continue in camera]