LANG Committee Report

SUPPLEMENTARY REPORT

NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF CANADA

“Access to Early Childhood Services”

Introduction

The New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP) would like to thank all who appeared before or submitted written briefs to the Standing Committee on Official Languages in connection with the Committee’s visit to Vancouver, British Columbia; Edmonton, Alberta; and Winnipeg, Manitoba. 

The NDP supports most of the recommendations in the Committee’s report, although we wish to present a few points with respect to access to early childhood services. As supported by the members of the Committee, this is out of a desire to put measures in place that help improve access to early childhood services for linguistic minorities with a minority-language education continuum in mind.

As well, the Office of the Commissioner has shown that the federal government’s efforts surrounding access to early childhood services in the minority language are not enough and that government must absolutely do more to combat assimilation.

The NDP wishes to support working mothers and fathers and make life more affordable, unlike the Liberal government, which did not make this a priority in the 2018 budget. We wish to see the creation of an affordable universal child-care system that considers the needs of linguistic minorities.

I- Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages

The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages asked the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development to report by March 31, 2018, on the measures taken to implement the recommendations addressed to each of them. We are therefore waiting for the Office of the Commissioner’s comments on the government’s response and specific follow-up. For now, the government has shown that early childhood services are in fact not a priority, since we are now in the second-to-last year of this government and nothing substantial has been done.

II- 2018 Budget

The 2018 budget tabled by the Liberal government acknowledges that the lack of child-care spaces is a major problem for most Canadian families. However, no solutions have been proposed to address the situation.

The current system barely covers one in four children, and daycare services in Canada are some of the most expensive in the world. According to Marie-Pierre Lavoie, President of the Fédération des parents francophones de Colombie-Britannique, “British Columbia would need at least 2,600 additional daycare spaces – in other words, 650 multiplied by four – if we assume that children spend the first year of their lives at home with a parent.”

Furthermore, the Liberal government has made no substantial investment in daycare services. In fact, Canada has invested only a tiny fraction of what Canadians need to end the shortage of daycare spaces. Waiting lists are very long as a result of the severe shortage of spaces in French-language child-care centres. In Manitoba, “about 800 children are on waiting lists for a place in French-language educational child care,” according to Brigitte L’Heureux, Managing Director, Fédération des parents du Manitoba. In Saskatchewan, 258 children aged 0 to 4 were on a waiting list for child care in 2015–2016. In their brief, the Conseil des écoles fransaskoises and its associates noted that 49.5% of francophone children in Saskatchewan whose parents want child care in French do not have access to a child-care centre. The government plans to invest only $20 million over 5 years in daycare services, and that is only in training early childhood educators and to help entrepreneurs open daycare centres. This is clearly not enough given the considerable needs. As stated by the Committee on Official Languages, “[m]oney is at the heart of the issue. To meet the existing and growing demand for French child-care services, francophone communities need enough financial resources.”

Conclusion

The NDP wishes to see the creation of an affordable universal child-care system that considers the needs of linguistic minorities. The NDP therefore calls on the Liberal government to pledge to reduce the cost of child-care spaces, open up new spaces for linguistic minorities, and provide universal access to early childhood services to address the specific needs of linguistic minorities.