THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL AFFAIRS, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, November 2, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met with videoconference this day at 11:30 a.m. [ET] to study Bill C-35, An Act respecting early learning and child care in Canada.
Senator Ratna Omidvar (Chair) in the chair.
The Chair: My name is Ratna Omidvar, and I’m a senator from Ontario.
I am the Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology. Before we begin, I would like to do a round table and have senators introduce themselves, starting with Senator Moncion.
[Translation]
Senator Moncion: Good morning. Senator Moncion, from Ontario.
Senator Cormier: Good morning. Senator René Cormier, from New Brunswick.
[English]
Senator Burey: Good morning. Sharon Burey, senator for Ontario.
Senator Moodie: Rosemary Moodie, senator for Ontario.
Senator Tannas: Scott Tannas from Alberta.
Senator Seidman: Judith Seidman from Quebec.
The Chair: Thank you, colleagues. Today, we continue our consideration of Bill C-35, An Act respecting early learning and child care in Canada. Joining us today by video conference, we welcome Brenda Lenahan, Founding Director, BC Complex Kids Society; Krista Carr, Executive Vice-President, Inclusion Canada; and Dr. Jamie Metsala, Professor of Education, Mount Saint Vincent University. Thank you so much for joining us today. I remind witnesses that you will each have five minutes for your opening statements, followed by questions by the senators.
Ms. Carr, I invite you to begin, followed by Professor Metsala and Ms. Lenahan.
Krista Carr, Executive Vice-President, Inclusion Canada: Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for the opportunity to appear before you today to address Bill C-35. I am joining you today from the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people.
I’m pleased to be a part of this critical discussion to advance foundational legislation for the provision of high-quality, affordable and inclusive early learning and child care in Canada. However, this bill lacks the legislative safeguards needed for an inclusive early learning and child care system in our country to be fully realized.
Inclusion Canada was founded over 60 years ago primarily by mothers, who, when wanting their children with intellectual disabilities to be educated in local schools, were rebuffed. Still, the right to inclusive education eludes us. Today, we are a national federation of 13 provincial and territorial and 300 local associations supporting children and adults with an intellectual disability and their families.
Inclusive early learning and child care benefits all children. Unfortunately, irrespective of the research as to the benefits of inclusive early learning for all children, children with disabilities continue to remain excluded or segregated. Bill C-35 is momentous legislation that has the potential to change the lives of children and families in Canada by enshrining into law high-quality, affordable and inclusive early learning and child care. However, simply referencing inclusion and disability, as the legislation does, is insufficient. Critical amendments are needed.
Too often, inclusion does not apply to individuals with an intellectual disability. The majority of school-aged children with intellectual disabilities are not educated in regular classrooms, and the majority of adults with intellectual disabilities remain unemployed. Inclusion is only a slogan when it is not explicitly defined and without funding and practices for it to be realized.
While Inclusion Canada supports Bill C-35, we know without it being strengthened, inclusive early learning and child care will remain limited, with exclusion and segregation continuing. Bill C-35 must clearly define early learning and child care principles and practices that are inclusive of children with disabilities. High-quality, affordable and inclusive early learning and child care not only have a significant impact on a child’s life, future education, employment and well-being, but also have a significant impact on the entire family as well as society. The cost of exclusion is high.
Access to inclusive early learning and child care for all children is a fundamental human right. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, or CRPD, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child — both of which Canada has ratified — recognize the right of all children, including children with disabilities, to access inclusive education and learning without discrimination.
Some suggested amendments from the comprehensive briefs we have submitted include:
Strengthen references to Canada’s commitment and obligations to the UN CRPD in the purpose of the proposed legislation, not just the preamble.
Include a definition of inclusion in the preamble to ensure it is clear and fundamentally more than just “access.”
Ensure it is expressly inclusive of children with disabilities and meets the full intent as contained in Article 24 of the CRPD.
Have the UN CRPD inform the interpretation and administration of the legislation in its entirety and any subsequent regulations.
Strengthen the guiding principles, particularly 7(1)(c), to ensure inclusion means children with disabilities, which requires providing the supports needed to ensure equal opportunity and access.
Require provinces and territories to ensure they collect data and report on key metrics measuring the progress being made in establishing accessible, affordable and fully inclusive early learning.
Bill C-35 must be specific in its commitments to inclusion. The policy choices made now will impact the future of our children and their families.
Our vision is one where families of children with an intellectual disability can approach any child care centre on any corner of any street, and their child will be welcomed and provided high-quality, inclusive early learning and child care. Parents of children with disabilities should be able to access the workforce on an equal basis with others. Please consider our amendments. High-quality, fully inclusive early learning and child care is a necessity. All children deserve the opportunity to thrive.
Thank you, senators.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Carr. Professor Metsala.
Jamie Metsala, Professor of Education, Mount Saint Vincent University, as an individual: Honourable members of the Senate of Canada, I am joining you today from unceded, ancestral Mi’kmaq territory. I would like to express appreciation for Bill C-35. My research and advocacy focuses on all students acquiring strong literacy skills, including those with learning disabilities or other risk factors.
The recent Ontario Human Rights Commission Right to Read inquiry report concluded that Ontario is failing too many students in learning to read. Students with disabilities, students from lower-income backgrounds, racialized students and Indigenous students are all much more likely to fall behind when it comes to early reading. These early language and literacy skills that place some students at risk for later academic failure do not begin to develop when children enter formal schooling. The preschool years are key to how well children will understand what they read and communicate their thoughts throughout their lifetime.
Towards best equipping early learning and child care settings to facilitate language and literacy acquisition for all children, I will briefly touch on three areas today.
The first area I would like to address is to establish guidelines for early learning and child care settings with one focus on early language and literacy. Importantly, there is a wealth of evidence concerning experiences that can positively impact these competencies and are essential for students at risk for later language and literacy difficulties. At the beginning of formal schooling, there are already vast differences between young children in the number of words they have in their vocabulary, in the knowledge of letter names and sounds and in their abilities to play with our language. These skills and knowledge are the best predictors of how young children will learn to read.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of these early individual differences in language and literacy, and this variation can, in large part, be traced to differences in early learning opportunities.
Critically important, literacy is also a social determinant of health, having an impact on children’s social and emotional well-being, as well as academic success, self-esteem and future education and employment opportunities.
Given the differences in young children’s language and literacy opportunities and the resulting competencies, Bill C-35 has the potential to be powerful in this domain.
Learning opportunities that will increase early language and literacy, however, need to be based on evidence. The National Early Literacy Panel from the U.S. is just one large-scale review on best practices in this domain. This evidence is essential for children who may be at risk for beginning school with lower language and literacy competencies.
Incorporating language and literacy-building activities like shared book reading with interactive conversations, intentionally building vocabulary and knowledge throughout this reading and talking and playing with language all help boost and foster higher levels of early literacy development.
Bill C-35 has recommended that best practices for quality early learning and child care will be central. One recommendation would be to explicitly state that the evidence base concerning best practices in these language domains be consulted.
The Canadian Children’s Literacy Foundation is dedicated to supporting young children and their families in the areas of language and literacy development, and has compiled and contributed to the literature base on how to effectively do so. One of the key ways to do this is more attention to further developing a qualified and well-supported early childhood workforce, my second area of focus.
Early childhood educators already understand that early literacy is important to children’s development, but they often lack the preparation on how to act on that information. For example, only 10% of well over 1,000 early childhood educators, or ECEs, surveyed by the Canadian Children’s Literacy Foundation reported having participated in any professional development around early literacy. Only 38% felt confident in supporting early literacy development, but an overwhelming 99% of respondents indicated that they desired such preparation.
There is substantial research underscoring how additional early childhood education preparation on early literacy and language activities can immensely impact educators confidence in fostering children’s language and literacy skills.
Finally, I would like to briefly mention the need for universal early screening in the areas of children’s language and literacy competencies in the preschool years. For children with dyslexia, we know that early indicators can help identify students at risk and facilitate getting these young children early effective intervention. As well, difficulties with other aspects of language are evident in early childhood and early intervention is key to help lessen later comprehension and language difficulties.
It is estimated that about 4% to 12% of the childhood population has speech and language disorders, and about 10% to 15% of the population may have dyslexia. The integration of community speech and language specialists with early childhood learning and child care centres would help to ensure we are serving those most at risk for language and learning disabilities at an optimal time in their development. As well, increasing the focus on early language and literacy acquisition and milestones for early childhood education preparation programs would help these professionals feel more confident to bring attention and support children in these areas in the early child care settings.
In conclusion, the proposed Canada early learning and child care act will ensure high-quality early learning in child care settings. Looking to evidence for best practices in the domain of early language and literacy development may help enhance the impact of Bill C-35. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Professor Metsala. Ms. Lenahan.
Brenda Lenahan, Founding Director, BC Complex Kids Society: Good morning. Thank you, chair. I am joining today from the territory of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation on the remote West Coast of Vancouver Island. I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my perspective today.
I am a member of the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care that is referenced in this bill, but today I am here in my role as the founder and a director of BC Complex Kids Society, a family-led non-profit that aims to connect families to each other and unify our voices to advocate for a better future for our medically complex kids. I also bring my lived experience here as I am a solo mom living in a remote community with my 9-year-old who has complex disabilities.
Like all parents, we love our kids unconditionally and strive every day to create good lives for them. But the deck is stacked against us as we face barriers to accessing almost every foundational need, across all ministries and across all provinces and territories with child care being near the top of the list of unmet needs. We want and we need to see meaningful change, and believe that this child care bill has the potential to do that.
When the draft bill first became public, I was struck deeply to see that the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was not referenced in the purpose of this bill. It is in the preamble, along with the Indigenous and children’s rights frameworks. However, while those frameworks were embedded in both the preamble and the purpose, the UN CRPD was missing from the purpose. This is a critical omission, and I am here today to ask this committee to make an important amendment and write the UN CRPD into the purpose of this bill.
Why does this matter? If a rights-based approach for children with disabilities is not expressly defined in the bill as a purpose, then it weakens federal, provincial and territorial obligations to prioritize disability inclusion as a deliverable. The exclusion of the UN CRPD also sends a signal of status quo, leaving families to continuously fight individual battles for unique solutions inside systems that are not designed for our children. All disabled kids deserve full access to the developmental and social opportunities that their peers have. As parents, we deserve the same opportunities as other parents to reach our financial potential. We could have a whole other discussion on the extraordinary costs associated with our children’s disabilities as it could easily be argued that our kids should be prioritized for child care.
I also want to expressly support the specific amendments proposed by Inclusion Canada that will strengthen this bill. In order to undo years of ableist policy and funding models, we need to be very intentional and make strong commitments with regards to accessibility of the built environment, disability-inclusive funding models and ensuring that it is made clear that children with disabilities have a right to equitable access and inclusion in child care from coast to coast to coast.
The bill states that Canada is committed to supporting the establishment and maintenance of a Canada-wide early learning and child care system, including before and after-school care. If a definition of ELCC is added to this bill, as many have suggested, it is important for this committee to understand that many of our kids need care support all the way up to the age of 19. I would suggest that adding a specific age profile is discriminatory towards so many kids that do not meet milestones of independence at a specific age. Before and after-school care is critical through the teen years, and would be best accommodated by a direct funding model that allows families to hire in-home care support. There are also times when hiring in-home care support may be necessary for younger children due to a variety of health circumstances and we need a system that allows that flexibility.
Unless we start prioritizing populations like ours, families will continue to live on the margins where they face deep financial, physical and emotional impacts. Newcomers, racialized families, LGBTQS and those living in remote and rural locations experience further challenges at the intersection with their child’s complex disabilities.
In Canada, disability poverty starts at birth for too many kids. As parents, we quickly learn that having a disabled child is a ticket to poverty and financial instability.
I hope with all of my optimistic heart that you will see the importance of the proposed amendments and choose to embed disability rights into the purpose of this bill as well as the other amendments proposed. Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Lenahan.
We will now proceed to questions from senators. Colleagues, for today’s meeting, you will have four minutes for both your question and your answer. There are three witnesses. Please indicate which witness you would like your question to be directed at if it’s to be directed at an individual.
The first question will come from Senator Cordy, deputy chair of the committee.
Senator Cordy: Thank you very much to all of you. Your presentations were fascinating. I taught elementary school and kindergarten for many years, so a lot of what you said were things that were on my dream list a while back.
My questions are for Professor Metsala. Congratulations to Mount Saint Vincent, who have always been at the forefront of early childhood learning and child care. You have done so much work in that area.
Professor, I’m going to give you two questions at the same time. You spoke about early screening as early indicators of challenges that the child may have later in life, which could be if they start dealing with it at the age of 3 or 4 — or 2 or 3 — certainly great headway can be made the earlier that you start. The longer that you let speech impediments, dyslexia or things like that go on, the more challenging it becomes.
Second, the challenge we heard about the workforce. I know you spoke about that, professor. We’ve heard challenges that people are burning out because of salary, because of responsibilities. I wonder if you could also comment on that.
Ms. Metsala: Thank you very much.
The early screening, as you noted, can really help reduce and mitigate some biological predispositions for reading disabilities or dyslexia as well as for developmental language disorders and for children who are struggling due to other factors. Universal screeners are meant to be reliable and valid but very quick, and so in terms of screening for dyslexia, we know if we look at early sound letter knowledge and if we look at how children can play with the sounds and language, so phonological awareness, they’re the best predictors of later reading issues. We can choose these children who are having those struggles. We can give a little bit more diagnostic assessment, not to diagnose but to find out where the difficulties are and to intervene very early.
Especially for children at risk for reading disabilities, interventions can be very effective. Often, we don’t see as many later readings disabilities as if we didn’t screen and intervene.
Similarly for language difficulties, there are multiple aspects of language, including syntax, morphology and vocabulary, and we can screen young children to see if they’re developmentally where we need them to be. If not, we can have thorough intervention programs happening with small groups of children to really boost those skills and to get them on a much better trajectory and mitigating academic learning and potential to fall way behind peers and not be able to succeed in school.
So early screening can be key. It’s meant to be quick, accurate and reliable.
In terms of the workforce, I think preparation programs are key to both support and to recommend that those be based on evidence. For example, we know that play is so important but often it’s very difficult to work in that language and intentional language learning that needs to happen in early childcare centres.
If we support early childhood educators with, for example, books and ways to be more interactive around reading those books, and books around certain themes that we need children to start to learn about — especially children at risk who may not have the same learning experiences outside of the early childhood setting — how plants grow and learning about the animal world. Then children come to school with so much more vocabulary and knowledge, and are ready to learn from school and be successful in later reading comprehension.
We need to support the workforce, but as you mentioned, we need to also respect and elevate our early childcare workers, and we need to do that through increased salary and recognition of all that they do. There are both those preparation programs but there’s also supporting —
The Chair: We must move on. Senator Seidman.
Senator Seidman: Thank you to our witnesses for very valuable insights about the disability community, especially. This is the first we’ve had with witness testimony from that community in particular. Thank you for that.
My question is to Ms. Carr. Inclusion Canada is suggesting a new clause 8(2) which would legislate that:
As a condition in funding agreements, provincial governments, Indigenous governing bodies and other Indigenous entities will be required to make public an annual report containing key metrics and indicators measuring the progress being made under the terms of their Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreements and Action Plans . . . .
Our committee did hear from several witnesses, including Gord Cleveland, who is the chair of the data indicators and research working group on the national advisory council. He told us that the provinces and territories are not collecting quality data on the early learning and child care systems. He doesn’t think that they’re making it a top priority. To quote him, he said they are not reporting in the way the agreements foresaw.
I guess my question for you is, since you have identified that as a very important issue, could you please tell us why it’s so important for the disability community that that kind of metrics and key indicators are collected, and what, in particular, is valuable from your point of view?
Thank you.
Ms. Carr: Thank you very much for your question, senator.
We do think it’s critically important. I would agree with the witness who testified that they’re not collecting the data, it’s not a priority and it’s not being collected properly. We have a really difficult time in the disability community to get accurate, up-to-date data particularly on the inclusion of children with disabilities, whether that’s in school or in early learning and child care.
It is critically important because otherwise when we try to make our policy arguments or our legislative arguments, whether that’s provincially, territorially or federally, everybody wants the data. Well, how many kids? Who is in and who is not in? I think we would need specific things collected but not limited to how many kids with identified disabilities are included right now in early learning and child care centres? Have children left those situations and what were the reasons by which they may have left? Because what we find in many cases if a child gets included originally, they may end up not having the proper support. The centre is not well-supported in terms of their inclusion, and they end up having to leave the centre. You could benchmark that against the number of children with disabilities that are in that province, et cetera, in that age bracket.
I think those are some of the critical pieces that we would really need to know about. And how many are being refused? And if they were refused, on what basis? Is it because the centre didn’t have the space or was it because the centre didn’t know how to properly support or didn’t have the resources to support, et cetera? I hope that answers your question.
Senator Seidman: Yes, it certainly does.
Senator Moodie: Thank you to the witnesses.
I wanted to just think back, if I could, with Ms. Carr about your experience with the House of Commons Social Development Committee. I know that you did provide a brief that very closely mirrors what you’ve said today. I know that it was considered and discussed, and that, in fact, probably did result in the strengthening of the bill around disabilities in 7(1)(c).
I’ll just read it very quickly:
Support the provision, including in rural and remote communities, of early learning and child care programs and services that are inclusive, of children from systemically marginalized groups, including children with disabilities . . . .
And it goes on.
I’m wondering what you think about why specifically further explicit language is needed. What was not provided by that amendment, which I think the folks in the other place thought had addressed your questions and your concerns?
Ms. Carr: Thank you for the question, Senator Moodie.
First of all, I want to say we tried hard to present to the Social Development Committee, and we’re not able to get on that agenda. I appreciate the opportunity to present to you.
I think we feel like it doesn’t go far enough. That particular section that you’re specifying needs to also include that it isn’t just about saying you’re inclusive of children with disabilities but that you’re actually providing the necessary supports that are required to ensure equal opportunity and equitable access. That’s the piece we’re looking for.
So definitely appreciative of the fact that the House committee added in disability, but we’re asking for it to go a bit further in terms of ensuring that the necessary supports are provided for that to be successful and for that child to be able to thrive in that environment.
Senator Moodie: Ms. Lenahan, there has been some discussion, and you raised it yourself today, around the definition of ELCC.
While some are seeking a stricter definition, others have highlighted — you included, I think — that the need to have a flexible definition to keep it open is more inclusive.
We have also heard that a stricter definition could tie the hands of the government — and provincial governments and territories — moving forward if they wanted to expand the program.
Could I hear your thoughts on this? Is a more flexible definition better for children with complex needs?
Ms. Lenahan: I believe it is. I believe we need flexible systems.
Of course, we want legislation to have strict parameters in terms of ensuring that inclusion opportunities are there. But our kids need the utmost in flexibility in the sense that, as I described, they don’t reach those milestones of independence at 12. So if the decision is made to expand and put a definition to 12, then we are explicitly excluding kids 13 to 19 who are not able to have their child care or care support needs met. It’s important to understand that, if any definitions are provided.
Yes, I really think we need to ensure a flexible system. There are many kids who need different opportunities, as I suggested as well. Sometimes, in those older years, direct funding is needed so a family can be empowered to hire a support worker so that, after school, that child has the support they need perhaps to attend an after-school program or to get home. It ought to be something flexible that works with the really unique needs our kids have, everything from medical supports to behavioural supports that are very different needs as well.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: The first part of my question is for Ms. Lenahan. You heard Ms. Carr’s position on the amendment to paragraph 7(1)(c). What is your position on this? Do you agree with Ms. Carr’s position on strengthening this section?
The second part of my question is for both of you. From your perspective, Ms. Lenahan and Ms. Metsala, considering that this bill seeks first and foremost to set up a public network, what type of child care setting would provide the best services for young children living with disabilities and deliver quality services in terms of language and literacy learning? This is keeping in mind that, in many provinces, there is both public and private provision of these services.
I would like to hear your comments on these issues, starting with you, Ms. Lenahan, on paragraph 7(1)(c).
[English]
Ms. Lenahan: Thank you for the question.
Yes, we support Inclusion Canada’s amendments. Strengthening the language, as has been suggested, is essential. It’s a historically and currently marginalized population regarding whom, unless we have explicit language, we will continue to — it won’t have the teeth it needs. We really need strong commitments here.
Can you repeat your second question?
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: Which type of child care setting would provide the best services for young children living with disabilities? Would that be private, public, family-based, licensed or unlicensed child care centres?
[English]
Ms. Lenahan: The reality is that what we desire and what is very possible — my son experienced some part-time child care opportunities that were in community. It was at a centre that I chose. I was very lucky to have that experience.
It needs to be a centre that’s in community with the peers you will end up going to school with later. That is critical and creates critical social connections for both the family and the child as they transition to kindergarten.
It’s critical that it’s accessible. Many of our kids are wheelchair users. It’s critical that they have the medical support they need. We used to have support in B.C. such that the staff would be trained to do basic things. Gastrostomy tube, or G-tube, feeding is not super complicated; parents are trained all the time to do G-tube feeding. It’s easy to train people to do that in a child care setting. Historically, that was something that was done. Recently, we lost that opportunity.
We need to ensure those supports are there, they are strong and there are more of them. They need to be built into the system.
The funding model is critical as well. I was only offered part-time. That means that the person who’s hired to support my son, one to one, they are only offered a part-time job. They are offered it at $23 an hour. It’s just not enough for them or for me as a parent to go work full-time.
There are all these critical pieces that we need to —
Senator Cormier: Thank you. Since I don’t want the chair to cut us off, I will ask Professor Metsala to answer the question, if it’s possible.
The Chair: He may do so on the second round, sir.
Senator Dasko: Thank you to our witnesses for being here today to talk about these issues.
My main question is for Ms. Carr. You are calling for language to be included in the bill, but I wanted to ask you about the arrangements and agreements that have already been reached with the provinces and territories. Is there any language in any of those agreements that speak to the services or supports for children with disabilities? I expect there isn’t, but if there is, I would like to know that.
Also, how have services for children with disabilities might have found their way into the existing arrangements, whether there is language?
Right now, in terms of the implementation of the funding from the federal government, the reduction of fees, expansion of services and so on, can you tell me about the services that children with disabilities might be achieving under the new agreements?
I know that’s a long question. I don’t expect you to go through all the provinces, but anything you can provide would be great. Thank you.
Ms. Carr: That is a two-part question, and I’ll start with the first part. Thank you for the question, senator.
As far as the existing agreements go, my understanding, from our provincial-territorial member associations that are working provincially with those, is that there is no obligation in those agreements for that funding to go towards creating disabilities-inclusive early learning and child care spaces. There are no real specifications around that.
We would have loved to have seen agreements that said the money will go to support inclusive settings that include all children and those types of things. I think inclusion is loosely mentioned in the agreements, but what I’m told based on the feedback I’m getting from our member associations is that most of that is being focused on diverse populations other than children with disabilities.
That is the best answer I can give you on the first part of the question.
The second part of the question is about what might be required, I believe.
Senator Dasko: [Technical difficulties] taken place so far in the rollout of the federal money into the provinces. What has happened? Can you enlighten us as to how the money might have helped children with disabilities so far?
Ms. Carr: I will not say that it has not supported children with disabilities. It depends upon the jurisdiction and what commitment they have to ensuring that their child care services, spaces, quality, et cetera, are inclusive of children with disabilities. In some provinces, we have seen more progress on that than others.
However, the big piece of it all is there is no real obligation around the funding or the agreements to ensure equal access for children with disabilities as there are for any other child, and that creates a serious problem for the families that we support because often mothers — not always mothers — are out of the workforce, not able to work and participate because they can’t get inclusive early learning and child care opportunities. That means families are much more likely to be low income, live in poverty but yet have higher costs associated with the disability of their child. It creates all kinds of issues.
It also makes inclusion in school for those children even more difficult because they haven’t had the ability to have that at an early learning stage.
I know you have limited time, so I’m going to stop there.
The Chair: Ms. Carr, perhaps I can probe a little further. Is it your expectation that if there is a specific mention in the legislation, as per the needs of children with disabilities, that it will also result in better metrics and indicators of progress in the annual report?
Ms. Carr: I hope so. My sublime hope is that we strengthen the bill around disability. It is sort of gobsmacking that they mention the rights of the child and the rights of Indigenous people but leave out the rights of persons with disabilities in the bill.
Yes, that would be the expectation, but I also think it needs to be included as an expectation in terms of the metrics and reporting around how we are doing. We all know that what gets measured gets done at the end of the day, and right now, it’s just not solid enough in its expectation around inclusion, disability and the associated metrics.
The Chair: You have a recommendation to us on that. We will go on to Senator Moncion.
[Translation]
Senator Moncion: My question is for Ms. Metsala. We all agree with what you said in your opening remarks, namely that the preschool years are essential for language and literacy acquisition. As minority francophones, we all fully grasp the importance of this aspect.
You mentioned the need to establish an early childhood workforce. I would like to know your views on the establishment of the national advisory council on early learning and child care, under clause 9 of Bill C-35, and whether this workforce would be complementary to the council. Could you elaborate on your views about this recommendation?
[English]
Ms. Metsala: Thank you for the question. It is pivotal that we look to the evidence base on what is effective to help all children be ready to learn once they get to the school and to be able to be successful, and to provide the experiences in the preschool settings that will facilitate that. Within the national advisory council, we would like a focus on that early learning piece and looking to those who can speak to that and integrate the play alongside of intentionally targeting and facilitating that. Also, how do we do that and prepare early childhood educators in their preparation programs as well as professional learning opportunities?
One thing that has sometimes been absent is looking to the evidence. Early language and literacy development is an area where we have lots of measures, and we have lots of evidence on what can be effective, what can actually prevent many later difficulties. Having a national advisory, part of that council that is focused on the learning and looking to expertise and looking to best practices as well as for preparation programs would strengthen the bill immensely.
Senator Moncion: Thank you.
Senator Burey: Thank you, again, to all our witnesses. Being a pediatrician who for 30 years looked after kids with learning disabilities, behaviour and developmental issues, this child care bill is very close to my heart.
I also hear from the witnesses some of the challenging issues that we have in pediatrics, child health and development and child care, and it speaks to the intersection of health, developmental services, social services, medical services and the silos of care, which all of you somewhat addressed. Ms. Carr and Ms. Lenahan are trying to somehow address this through having the inclusive language strengthened because we have silos of care. As Ms. Lenahan spoke about her child with medical complexities, the G-tube, that was discontinued in the child care setting and so you could not then have the child there.
These kinds of complex issues, can this bill address those concerns and achieve that? The coordination of all this type care, are we looking to this bill to achieve that?
Ms. Carr: I can start on that, and I would be interested in what other people have to say. Thank you, senator, for the question. I don’t think this bill can achieve everything. We can only do so much, and the silos of care go far beyond the child care bill, as you would well know in your profession.
Where we’re going is we need to use every opportunity. This bill is one piece that can do a little bit more to get us closer to where we need to be, and I think we as an organization — speaking on behalf of our organization and the families and children we represent — need to use every opportunity to ensure that we take every piece of legislation and just try to get us closer, further and ensure access, and not just access but full, quality participation. No, I don’t think it can do everything, but I think it can get us closer if we do it well.
Senator Burey: Does anyone else want to comment?
Ms. Metsala: I’ll just quickly say that there is an opportunity to strengthen the bill in having more coordination, particularly between those professionals that really focus on early development, whether it’s cognitive, medical, social, but working together and to make these centres a hub. That’s also a way to support early childhood educators in ongoing professional learning and support. It would be, I think, a good thing if some of the services could be integrated and having hubs to meet both developmental and complex needs. Thank you.
Senator Burey: If you had to choose one amendment, what amendment would you choose that you think could achieve the most?
Ms. Carr: Wow. That’s a big question. Thank you for the question, senator. Defining “inclusion.” I’m going to probably pick two. I’m going to say defining what “inclusive” means in the legislation as well as enshrining the rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, particularly Article 24, would be the two most critical.
Senator Burey: Thank you very much.
Senator Cormier: My question will be for Professor Metsala.
[Translation]
We have more than one type of child care setting, as you know, namely private, public, family-based, licensed and unlicensed centres. In your opinion, based on your data and research, could you tell us which models would best address the issues you’ve raised, especially in terms of fostering language learning and literacy?
I would like to hear your views on this subject, because I think one of the things I find most challenging is understanding how to deal with the whole child care ecosystem in certain provinces where public and private child care coexist to a significant extent. Thank you.
[English]
Ms. Metsala: Thank you for the question. I don’t have direct research on which type of setting is best for facilitating early language and literacy. If we look to the early childhood educators and their preparation, as well as ongoing professional learning, I think they could be successful across multiple settings. Maybe looking to the profession and how we can really support those who choose that profession and making it a very attractive profession is the way to ensure that across multiple settings we can reach those goals of early literacy and language. What I’m hearing here today is that the flexibility has been very important for individuals, even with more complex needs. Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: Does the bill, as currently drafted, take into account what you’ve just mentioned?
[English]
Ms. Metsala: I wonder if I can turn that question over to others who have thought more about that aspect of it. I just think their knowledge will inform you better in that way.
Ms. Carr: I don’t really have a good answer to that question. Sorry about that.
Senator Cormier: It’s okay.
The Chair: If I may interject, Senator Cormier, I think we have heard from the witnesses that in order to meet the needs of children with disabilities, we need a more flexible model as opposed to one-size-fits-all. Am I putting words in your mouth? I don’t want to do that.
Ms. Lenahan: I would agree with that, chair. Yes, I would agree with that.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Seidman: I’m going to go back to Senator Burey’s question about a key amendment or amendments. I won’t restrict you to a single amendment. But I find it worrisome that, currently, diversity seems to be met, but that does not necessarily include disabled children somehow. Ms. Carr, I think you clearly referred to that, and I think we have heard it from our other witnesses, Ms. Lenahan and Ms. Metsala, as well. That concerns me.
If we look at the issue around the definition of “inclusion,” you recommended it in the preamble, but I think you also recommended under the definition section. You say very clearly that it needs to ensure that it’s clear and fundamentally more than access. Access is a very generic concept in many ways; at least it has become that. We used to talk about accessibility, but now I think it’s become much more generic. You are making it very clear that we have to be inclusive of children with disabilities, and it has to be spoken, it can’t be implied.
You recommend several areas where we could include simple words like “the rights of persons with disabilities” in paragraph 1 of the preamble and a definition later on. Can you pick it out quickly? I’m looking at your submission to us, Ms. Carr. Could you highlight for us how we could deal with this issue in a very clear, focused way in making a couple of key amendments, or more than that, if necessary?
Ms. Carr: Thank you very much for the question, senator. If you look at the amendments that we have made, there are a few areas where you could tighten it up.
To your discussion about access, that only means that, technically speaking, you can. But it doesn’t actually mean that you’ll have the support or that you will be fully welcomed or included. It’ll be all the “buts” that go with that. We’re asking that we make sure that the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is on an equal basis with the other conventions referenced, which will help us think about what inclusion really means and about the fact that it includes children with disabilities.
Back to what you had said about diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, what we find in DEI initiatives across the board is that they include everybody but people with disabilities, specifically. We know that people with disabilities are also part of all those other equity-seeking groups as well.
Under funding commitments, making sure the support for funding is there and in the key metrics, making people accountable to have to report back and say how they have done. There are not a lot of amendments, but those key ones will really strengthen it.
Senator Seidman: Thank you. That’s really important.
The Chair: Thank you, colleagues, and thank you to your witnesses for spending your time and sharing your perspectives with us. I think I speak for all of us when I say that you have widened our understanding of Bill C-35 as it pertains to children with disabilities enormously.
Joining us today for our second panel as we study Bill C-35, we welcome in person Julie Savard-Shaw, Executive Director of The Prosperity Project; David Macdonald, Senior Economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives; and, by video conference, Lisa Wolff, Director, Policy and Research at UNICEF Canada. Thank you so much for joining us today.
As per our standard practice, witnesses will have five minutes each for their opening statements followed by questions from our members. We will begin with Mr. Macdonald, followed by Ms. Savard-Shaw and Ms. Wolff.
Mr. Macdonald, the floor is yours.
David Macdonald, Senior Economist, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives: Thank you for your invitation to speak on Bill C-35.
Over the past decade, I’ve had the opportunity to work with the child care community collecting critical data on child care in Canada’s big cities. Our fee survey combined with other research identifying child care deserts provides key public and consistent approaches to evaluating both affordability and accessibility of child care in Canada. Little did we realize in 2014 when this endeavour started that a sea change to child care was coming in under a decade.
I’d like to draw your attention to my most recent study, co-authored with Martha Friendly, Measuring Matters, our 2023 survey of child care fees in 37 Canadian cities. I’ll note that this is the longest running and most detailed annual survey on child care fees in Canada. Without the data it collected in 2019, there is no outside method for evaluating whether the provinces and territories hit the federal 50% reduction goal by December 2022.
As part of the creation of the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care in Bill C-35, I encourage the government to task either this new council or other organs of the federal government with public and independent evaluation of the federal goals embedded in the Canada-wide early learning and child care, or CWELCC, system.
While the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, or CCPA, and child care advocates have played an important role in collecting and analyzing critical information on fees and space availability, we aren’t the right vehicle to continue it. Given the size of investments in ELCC from the federal government, and it’s much better access to provincial data, it should be the one rigorously, independently and publicly evaluating provincial and territorial progress towards the goals it laid out, whether positive or negative. This is too important to leave to a think tank conducting child care research on a shoestring budget.
With respect to our most recent child care fee report, we evaluated the progress towards the December 2022 target of a 50% in fees and it has been solid. Half of the big cities have seen a 50% reduction in fees versus the reference here of 2019 or 2020. A further quarter have seen fee reductions in the 40% range — while not hitting the federal target, they’ve still gotten fairly close.
A final quarter of cities have made progress, but their median fees have only fallen between 20% to 30%. The cities falling furthest behind were in P.E.I., Alberta and B.C. Both P.E.I. and Alberta counted changes in their low-income subsidies towards their 50% reduction in fees. Other provinces also changed their low-income subsidies, but didn’t count that towards their 50% reduction. In B.C., there was more of a mixed bag with some cities coming close, such as Vancouver, largely due to rapid expansion of $10 a day spaces there. However, other cities like Surrey or Burnaby were further away from the 50% goal.
The fee reduction initiative increases were not quite enough to reduce fees by 50% when being offset by non-participation and compositional changes, combined with little expansion of $10 a day spaces.
One of the other interesting results this year was the variance we’re seeing in some cities. For instance, in Hamilton, most parents are paying within only a few dollars a day of the median. But in larger cities, such as Toronto or Richmond, parents are paying a wide variety of fees well above the median, even if those fees have fallen. Set fees, as we’re seeing in seven provinces and territories now, essentially eliminate these wide variances.
Different approaches to fee reductions are yielding different results in the provinces and territories, and this deserves further study from the federal government as it has serious implications for the 2025 CWELCC target of $10 a day fees.
We’ve settled on four recommendations as the next steps on the national child care plan as part of this fee report. First, rapidly move to set fees in the six jurisdictions that don’t yet have them to eliminate variance, and then predictably ratchet those fees down to $10 a day by 2025-26. Second, we need to publicly plan the location of new spaces to ensure they are located close to where children live instead of only in downtowns and only in big cities. Third, we need to continue the focus on non-profit expansion given the widening fee gap between non-profits and for-profit providers. Finally, as federal funding replaces parent fees, we need to ensure that workers’ wages are prioritized in funding formulas.
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your questions.
Julie Savard-Shaw, Executive Director, The Prosperity Project: Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to acknowledge I’m delivering my remarks on the traditional and unceded territory of the Anishinaabeg Algonquin Nation.
My name is Julie Savard-Shaw, and I am the Executive Director of The Prosperity Project. The Prosperity Project was founded in April 2020 by a group of more than 65 executive women from across the country who feared the impact of the pandemic on women’s careers.
Now that the pandemic is largely behind us, The Prosperity Project is shifting all its focus on initiatives that help identify and tackle the barriers standing in the way of women’s economic prosperity, particularly women from underrepresented groups.
One barrier continues to be consistently raised as the most difficult issue to balance in a woman’s career, and that is child care.
[Translation]
I have personal experience with this. Not only have I never been able to find a space for my son in a French-language child care centre, or at least a truly bilingual one, but, so far, I haven’t been able to find a space in a French-language before- and after-school child care centre.
Fortunately, my work schedule allows me to drive my son at 9:30 in the morning and pick him up at 3:30 p.m., but many parents don’t have this flexibility. Unfortunately, as we all know, it’s the mothers who overwhelmingly pay the price.
[English]
The Prosperity Project applauds the federal government for taking this important first step to realizing a Canada-wide early learning and child care system. We support the need to enshrine ELCC into law, and while we do not wish to see the adoption of this bill delayed beyond the end of 2023, some clarity is needed regarding a few issues.
First, given the terrible situation that occurred in Alberta because of poorly enforced health and safety standards to the commercial kitchen supplying the food to daycares, The Prosperity Project believes it is important to establish stronger food handling practices and inspection requirements to safeguard the well-being of our children. While a reference to health and safety standards could be added to clause 7(1)(b), we strongly recommend that bilateral agreements make specific reference to the need for stronger food handling practices in kitchens catering to children in order to receive government funding.
Second, the funding commitments outlined in clause 8 do not set any accountability or oversight mechanisms. As it stands, reporting by the provinces and territories is not overly transparent and not easily accessible. Yet so many of the responsibilities and decisions rest on them to ensure the equitable, high-quality and easily accessible access to child care programs. The public deserves to know where and how provinces and territories are using the federal funding.
[Translation]
Third, as my colleague has already mentioned, the Prosperity Project is concerned about the challenges posed by a significant increase in demand without an increase in supply, particularly because of staff shortages.
I was talking earlier about not being able to find a space for my son, but what’s even harder to believe is that child care services in Ottawa’s French-language schools rely on kindergarten teachers to fill their positions. These women arrive at the child care centre at 7 a.m., work until 9 a.m., then go to the school to work from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and then return to the child care centre to work from 3:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., simply because there aren’t enough workers.
We therefore recommend that the federal government stop relying entirely on the provinces and territories to ensure the sustainability of the education system by creating incentives to attract more people into the profession.
It’s time to provide student loan forgiveness for people who get a certificate in early childhood education, as the federal government did for family doctors and nurses.
[English]
To close, I want to reiterate The Prosperity Project’s support for this important step in cementing the right to benefit from child care services because we strongly believe it is the number one support women require in order to advance in their careers. Ultimately, when women succeed, the economy prospers.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Ms. Wolff, please go ahead.
Lisa Wolff, Director, Policy and Research, UNICEF Canada: Thank you, Madam Chair and honourable senators. Greetings to my colleagues.
I am joining you from the traditional territories of the Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabeg peoples in the jurisdiction of the Williams Treaties.
Across 190 countries and territories around the world, UNICEF’s mandate is to advance children’s universal human rights, guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other core human rights treaties.
Early learning and child care has been a growing focus in our work across the world, in low- and middle-income countries, for its contribution to equitably secure the rights and futures of children and societies. So UNICEF Canada welcomes Bill C-35 to enshrine in law a sustainable and accountable commitment to engage the federal government’s considerable funding levers, and advance its policy-relevant interest in a system of high-quality early learning and child care. The system should be universal, equitable and publicly available to every child in cooperation with provinces, territories and Indigenous organizations and governments.
While the journey to get to this milestone is more than 50 years old, an important contribution came in 2008 with the release of a UNICEF report card on child care in high-income countries. The report card series is published by UNICEF’s Global Office of Research and Foresight. We have been putting out a report card series on children in high-income countries for more than two decades. We’ve been comparing and measuring these countries because they have similar levels of national wealth and should be able to achieve similar outcomes for children. The fact that they do not is because they have different levels of policy ambition for children.
The 2008 report card measured the achievement of 10 child-care policy benchmarks across — at that time — 26 high-income countries. Those were just minimum standards for an adequate child care system. They were achieved in about a third of high-income countries. Canada ranked 24th of those 26 countries, achieving only 1 of the 10 benchmarks. That was for having at least 50% of staff in accredited early child care services with a relevant qualification.
Canada’s children did not have the benefit of the other nine indicators of child care access, inclusion and quality, nor did it have indicators of supporting policies that surround a good child care system, such as having a national plan for children, a child poverty rate below 10% and adequate and inclusive parental leave.
The record card, to say the least, set off a vigorous debate about our progress for our youngest children.
How many of those 10 benchmarks would Canada meet today? Evidence suggests about 3. In addition to the original benchmark, Canada now exceeds expenditure of 1% of GDP on early childhood services, but spending still falls short of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, average. Canada brought the child poverty rate down below 10%, according to the low-income measure pegged at 50% of the median income. However, at 9.4%, child poverty is still higher than the rate for adults.
Those are minimum benchmarks that any wealthy nation should be able to achieve. Bill C-35 rightly advances an even higher ambition, consistent with our wealth as a country and the UN Sustainable Development Goals we’ve committed to. As a law in itself, it is an important feature — an indicator of an important child care system.
We’re glad to see the bill references Canada’s international human rights obligations, particularly pertaining to children and explicitly to children with disabilities and to Indigenous peoples. A rights-base approach is also given effect with the commitment to monitoring and evaluation. Ideally, monitoring system outputs would be embedded in a broader strategy of monitoring outcomes for children and youth.
Is child care good for children? How are children’s lives and well-being changing or improving because we have a good, strong system in place? That data should be collected in a way to allow for international comparisons, which have really eluded Canada.
The bill could still be strengthened by including child rights-based principle in section 7, specifically the right of children to have their best interests defined by the Convention on the Rights of the Child as a priority guiding the provision of early learning and child care services. We know those services tend to serve many different aims; sometimes, we forget about the best interests of children.
Enacting the provisions of Bill C-35 and fully implementing the multilateral frameworks should enable Canada to universally achieve and, ideally, exceed the minimum benchmarks from the 2008 UNICEF report card, at least for access and quality.
But to get every child off to the best start in life, Canada should also attend to all of the benchmarks of a fulsome early year system, achieving equitable access to parental leave, reducing that child care gap between parental leave and child care, a near universal outreach of essential child health services and a national plan or strategy for children. It should aim to lift every child above the poverty line.
Doing so would nourish child development, fairness and opportunity, and help the federal government achieve a wide range of its goals. It would also optimize federal spending by front-loading more of it earlier in the life course.
Every child has the right to be cared for, to social protection, to child care services and to optimal development starting in the first months of life. Bill C-35 is an important step to help fulfill those obligations.
Thank you for inviting me to this discussion.
The Chair: Thank you very much to all our witnesses. We will start with questions. You will have five minutes each, colleagues.
Senator Seidman: Thank you very much for your testimony. It is very revealing. I think I will start with you, Ms. Wolff.
You mentioned it in your presentation right at the end, but I’d say in the introduction of your brief to us — that would be your March 2023 report — you state that Canada does not currently collect data that allows its ELCC systems to be directly compared to peer countries. You also mentioned the OECD, of course. In fact, if we examine the OECD’s international comparisons, Canadian data is largely absent.
What are the drawbacks of not collecting internationally comparable data? Why is it important? Thank you.
Ms. Wolff: Thank you for that question, Senator Seidman.
Going back to my earlier statement, we compare countries because it demonstrates what is achievable in practice and not just with ideals of, in this case, inclusion or equity. It is about what countries with similar resources can and do achieve because they have certain policies in place.
What can we learn from that? One example comes from a 2019 report that UNICEF put out on family-friendly policies in rich countries. Canada didn’t have all of the data that we were able to report for other countries, but one of the things we were able to do is rely on some of the excellent academic experts in this country to provide similar data, if not directly comparable. We found that 54% of 2-year-olds to 4-year-olds at that time — again, around 2019 — had access to organized child care. In OECD countries, the average was 70%. In one third of those countries, it was 80%. Just that example alone shows you the gap in access in countries with very similar economies.
Having comparable data can help us understand what good looks like and if we’re moving in the direction of what’s possible and achievable.
Senator Seidman: I’m a great believer that evidence-based is critical and data is the basis of evidence-based. You have illustrated a very important factor here in terms of understanding our standards in this country when it comes to early childhood learning.
I should ask the same question of you, Mr. Macdonald, because you have done labour-intensive data collection around fee structures. We heard in this committee, at the very beginning, that what we’re lacking and what we desperately need in this country around this particular program is a national data strategy. How would that make for a better understanding of the services we provide and where we’re lacking?
Maybe I should ask this of both of you, Ms. Savard-Shaw and Mr. Macdonald, if you could respond to that. I think the chair will tell me very soon that I’m running out of time.
Mr. Macdonald: Thank you so much for the question. In terms of data collection, I would start with the explicit goals of the CWELCC and we can move on from there, evaluating the 50% reduction in fees and then progressing towards $10 a day not only at the provincial level, although that is how the CWELCC agreements are signed, but also further down at the municipal level. There are big differences in child care fees between Toronto and Windsor, for instance, despite the fact that they’re both in Ontario. That is one of the pieces we have added to over the years, this intensive phone survey of all the child care centres across the country in the big cities.
We shouldn’t be the ones doing this given that $10 billion per year will be spent on the program in the end, someone else should be doing this. Statistics Canada is starting to collect this data at the provincial level, though not necessarily at the city level. Tying this all together in terms of whether goals are being met in particular provinces or cities — because one of the things that we noted in the fee survey is that in some cities maybe the goals are being met in British Columbia, for instance, and in others they’re not because of specifics of what is happening in the city, compositional changes, expansions and subprograms. These are extremely important in terms of attaining the goals.
I don’t think the federal government should take the province’s word for it that this has happened. We need to use the data agreements that have been signed with the provinces. The federal government now has much better access than I have to evaluate these, but to do it publicly as well, whether positive or negative, to ensure that we all understand where we are in the progress towards $10 a day on the fees front.
I think we’re making solid progress, so I don’t think it’s a surprise, but I think the details matter. It shouldn’t be a think tank on a shoestring budget that is doing this evaluation. It should be the federal government, or an organ of it, that is doing it in a public fashion.
Senator Seidman: Thank you. That’s important.
Ms. Savard-Shaw: I would echo both of their comments, and I would add around the fee structure that it’s important to keep track of the data, but even more important is tracking the number of new spaces that are being created, the number of employees that are being hired and the number of raises being handed out in order to keep the workforce quality. We’re lacking data on essentially every single category. It’s incumbent on the federal government to ask provinces for that data in order to get the next tranche of funding. I’m being told that is happening, but where are those reports?
Senator Seidman: Yes. We’re being told it’s not a high priority for the provinces and territories, sadly. You make the point of how critically important it is. We’re spending a lot of money on a national program, and we need a way to evaluate whether we’re meeting our objectives. You’re all saying that very clearly to us. I appreciate that a lot.
The Chair: The challenge of a federation, I would suggest.
Senator Seidman: It is. We know it is not only in education but in health care. We see it all the time. We all saw it during COVID.
The Chair: Mr. Macdonald, if I may, your colleagues on this panel have put forward their proposed amendments to strengthen the bill. In your brief, you have made four recommendations. Would you like to word these recommendations to us as amendments or are these just recommendations for the government to think about as they roll things out?
Mr. Macdonald: Those four recommendations were a part of the recommendations for the fee report, so they are broad recommendations to the federal government.
With respect to this bill in particular, it’s a commitment to public evaluation of key parts of the CWELCC. That is technically part of the annual report requirement of the national council, but only looking at fees, our latest report was 62 pages. There’s a lot of interesting work going on that could be done on fees alone, not just as a one-page part of an annual report.
Simply waiting for the time when an annual report is published may not be the appropriate time to publish key data points. For instance, the evaluation of the 50% reduction in December 2022. It was appropriate to do a report potentially earlier than the annual report. To have separate reports that are being published on these goals, accessibility and affordability is part of the list that would be included in the annual report for the national council, but evaluating these goals as a requirement — that’s public, not exclusively to the minister — is also something that the broader public can evaluate. I think that could be an important function of the national council that would be created by Bill C-35.
The Chair: Thank you for that clarification.
Senator Moodie: I’d like to carry on this discussion about what your data tells us and extrapolate it a little bit to what we’re hearing.
Your focus in section 5 of your report where you talk about your findings on the gap between non-profit and for-profit fees; particularly, figure 7 demonstrates notable gaps. When we consider that the for-profits sit much higher and generally seem to be much more costly to run for whatever reason, we have often engaged and heard in this committee that for-profit expansion is a solution for lack of access in certain communities. Given the higher fees that for-profit centres are charging, in your view, what would the impact be for expanding for-profit child care in areas where there are child care deserts?
Mr. Macdonald: Thank you, Senator Moodie, for the question. The fee gap has always existed, which is to say that average fees in non-profit centres are lower in almost all cities compared to private centres. That was the result of the fees. For-profit centres, on average, charge more. That doesn’t tell us anything about the cost; we didn’t analyze the cost, we only analyzed the fees. Broadly speaking, what that might mean is that to buy an extra space in a for-profit centre is going to cost more than buying a space in a non-profit centre.
This gap existed prior to the provincial implementation of the CWELCC programs and the 50% reduction. That gap has widened even further as a result of the CWELCC programs for a couple of reasons. Several of the gaps are quite large in B.C. cities. One of the reasons for that is the expansion of $10 a day spaces that existed in all cities. In a minority of cases, about 10% of centres were at $10 a day prior to the rapid expansion in the last year and a half. That rapid expansion has happened almost exclusively on the non-profit side, and has been heavily weighted towards the city of Vancouver in large part because the majority of its spaces are non-profit. You see a big expansion of $10 a day spaces in the non-profit sector in Vancouver, which drives a big gap between for-profits that are not participating in $10 a day and non-profits that are.
Broadly speaking, there is non-participation in these programs. In most provinces, you don’t have to participate in a fee reduction program. The centres that are not participating in fee reduction programs are more likely to be for-profit. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of for-profits participating in fee-reduction programs. There are, but for the programs that aren’t likely to participate, they’re more likely to be for-profits.
In terms of expansion, there’s been relatively little thought — and this is something we looked at in our child care deserts report — about public management of the location of the new spaces. Unless we actually say, “We want more spaces in small towns and rural communities and certain underserved suburban areas,” we won’t get them. If we say to providers, “Here’s a load of money. Go build a centre where it’s most convenient for you,” centres will locate in big cities and downtowns because that’s the pattern we already see. That’s most convenient for them. Not only do they get access to higher-density areas downtown, they get access to commuters. People commute with children because there are potentially more spaces downtown than close to where they live in suburban areas.
That’s not how we manage public education. We don’t locate schools where it’s most convenient for the school; we locate schools close to where kids live. That’s not how we have managed the child care system, unfortunately.
There are some exceptions to that, but one of the big challenges — and this is one of the recommendations — is having public management of where those centres go, attempting to keep those costs low and to contain costs so a portion of what’s being paid to build and run new centres isn’t going to profits. Very little optimization can be done in a child care centre. There aren’t innovations. The costs are quite set — staff costs, real estate costs. Those don’t vary because they’re regulated. You can’t decrease the staff count because that’s illegal in most cases.
The only way you can squeeze a profit line in there is through higher fees. If you can’t charge higher fees because they’re being regulated, you might potentially get them through lower wages or lower real estate costs. Again, there is a problem there, right? That profit has to come from some place.
Senator Burey: Mr. Macdonald, you are on the hot seat today because of all the data that we want. Thank you so much for the yeoman’s work you have been doing, as you say, for over a decade.
One of my questions was going to be where you go from here, but you said at the beginning that this is a bigger problem, a bigger statistics-gathering issue now. Thank you for saying that.
I will read back some of your words about the workforce, although your survey was not specifically about that. You said:
Child care workforce recruitment and retention have not been part of the annual fee survey. But since workforce issues are closely linked to affordability and accessibility, it is not possible to consider affordable, accessible child care without addressing these workforce issues—they deserve urgent, immediate attention.
What should a workforce strategy look like? How should we go about setting up the information systems to get that data to inform policy?
Mr. Macdonald: Thanks again for the question. The research I’ve done is not explicitly on the workforce, but plenty of concern exists in the child care community that the real choke point for the creation of new spaces isn’t capital dollars, per se. It’s that you won’t be able to find the workers to work those spaces due to low pay, due to the difficulty in hours that are quite variable, hours that are part-time and not full-time.
It’s not a good place to work. Fundamentally, that’s the challenge. It’s not a good job. We need to make it a good job, and fast. That involves, certainly, more full-time work. Plenty of people have ECE training, but they don’t last very long in the profession. They might be there for five years in their 20s. They may really want to work there but just realize it’s not a career. It’s just too low-paying, and they go on to something else. It’s a huge challenge.
I suspect that we’re unlikely to win those folks back to child care centres even if there were higher pay. There needs to be a focus on expanding ECE education so we have more people coming in, but we need to retain them. This is the big challenge, retention, in addition to sort of widening the pipeline. That likely has to mean across-the-board higher wages. To some degree, that was incorporated in agreements through wage grids that stabilizes pay in a province and will raise pay in some areas where that pay might have been lower or below the standard. But higher pay will be one of the key parts to that retention. It can’t just be higher pay for new workers; it has to be higher pay for the workers who are already there to ensure retention. We don’t want folks to stay in the sector for two or three years and then leave. That’s one of the big problems today.
Senator Burey: Should that be part of the work of the advisory council? This should be an integral part, yes?
Mr. Macdonald: In terms of basic data collection on the fees being charged in different cities, that is a pretty basic data point given that it is in the window and one of the defining features of the CWELCC system. It’s not being done by folks other than us and some Statistics Canada folks. That is unfortunate. Just the raw count of spaces and how they are increasing or not over time is actually where a lot of my work will go for the next couple of years. Again, that’s not being actively tracked by the federal government.
Those are certainly some key starting data points. Further down the road, we want to know the wage levels of people working in the sector. What are their education levels? Is the count of people working in the sector expanding? There is some academic work on this front, but it is not current.
Those could be key parts of the national council’s duties: to produce detailed public reports comparing different provinces on how they are doing on their own commitments, on the CWELCC agreements and on broader pieces.
I don’t think this is something exclusively for the annual report, but that’s how Bill C-35 is currently written. There is a page on training in the annual report. There is a page on fees in the annual report. There is a page on space expansion in the annual report. We just completed a 62-page report only on fees; that’s all it contains, details on fees. Given the amount of money that’s being expended, these are much bigger research topics than could be included as one page in an annual report.
The Chair: Thank you for that, Mr. Macdonald.
Ms. Wolff, we’ve heard a lot about the low wages in this country for qualified ECE workers and the number of ECE workers in the system. How do we compare globally on this particular question of quality?
Ms. Wolff: Quality is probably one of the most challenging areas to measure in the system. Different indicators have been used, even including ratios of educators to children. When it comes to quality, it’s going to be looking beyond the system outputs. What is the system doing compared to what it’s achieving, actually, in terms of children’s well-being?
There is a fairly simple equation. Some countries have the trifecta of early child services. They have strong universal child care systems with access for every child who needs or wants it. They have inclusive, well-remunerated parental leave and a small gap between the two, and they have lower poverty. Those three family-friendly policies get better outcomes for children. It’s tough to isolate any one of those family policies for its contribution to good childhood outcomes, but we know that access to good quality child care for all those who need it matters.
I encourage attention being paid as this system continues to roll out. Are we shifting the outcomes from the start of school readiness all the way up to the NEET rate? How many youth are not in education, employment or training at age 15 in this country? It’s going to be a long-term project to understand how we’re shifting. Other countries demonstrate that when you invest in these robust services, you get the good outcomes. We can sort of rely on that equation.
The Chair: With this bill and these investments, I hope we will improve our standing in your global benchmark.
[Translation]
Senator Moncion: I will ask my question in French, to follow up on Senator Omidvar’s question.
Ms. Wolff, you have talked about our system compared to others in the rest of the world. Has a comparison been made with the system that exists in Quebec, since the salaries are regulated and there have long been designated child care spaces in the province?
Has a comparison been made with the Quebec system to assess what works well there and how it could be integrated into the Canadian system?
[English]
Ms. Wolff: UNICEF itself has not done an in-depth study on the family-friendly policies in Quebec and child outcomes. But we are well aware that a more advanced child care system, a more inclusive and well-remunerated parental leave and a lower child poverty rate exist in that province. It’s no coincidence that many of the health indicators of children in Quebec are strong. It’s our own — thank you for pointing that out — in-country example of a jurisdiction where when you have the input into the early years, you get the outcome for children that you hope to see.
[Translation]
Senator Moncion: Mr. Macdonald or Ms. Savard-Shaw, with regard to the number of child care spaces, you talked about low wages and the environment. Now, I would like to ask you the same question about Quebec, because we have a very good model. There are challenges too, but the way Quebec handles child care is, I think, an example to follow.
[English]
Mr. Macdonald: Certainly, in terms of space availability. In the most recent child care deserts report earlier this year, Quebec ranked second best in the country with only 11% of young children living in child care deserts, which is to say, a postal code with more than three children per licensed space. P.E.I. came in first, in terms of best accessibility. What was interesting about Quebec was not only that there is a relatively small proportion of children that don’t have licensed child care spaces nearby, but that this was true not only in big cities, but also in smaller towns and even in rural areas. These are areas like northern Quebec. These are not densely populated areas, and nonetheless, we found that licensed spaces there were relatively comparable to child populations. This does, I think, in addition to Prince Edward Island, suggest that the Quebec system has been much better than other provinces just in the straight provision of licensed spaces.
I would point out that the initial rollout of $5 a day child care in Quebec in the 1990s followed a particular path, which is to say, there were certainly $5 a day spaces, but there was a rapid expansion of the private sector in order to increase spaces in that period as a result of the tax credit that supported them. Studies of the time in the private side noted that those private spaces were generally of low quality compared to the childcare centre, or CPE, sector, which also charged $5 a day, but had much higher quality.
I think this is potentially a cautionary tale for a national program that’s attempting to do something very similar. If the provinces and territories are incapable of expanding public spaces rapidly enough, the demand will almost certainly push into the private sector, and governments will yield to private sector expansion, potentially at lower quality. That was certainly the experience in Quebec in the 1990s. I would put that out there as what may happen if it’s not possible to expand in the public sector because we’re not working hard enough or the provinces and territories are not working hard enough to do that.
[Translation]
Senator Moncion: You mentioned the shortage of child care spaces, Ms. Savard-Shaw, and there’s a child care centre in downtown Ottawa that we’ve been talking about for several years and that is closed. There’s no guarantee that these spaces will be available elsewhere.
In Ontario, I know that, for example, Grandir ensemble is one of the most widely used child care organizations in the Ottawa area. You talked about the extremely limited access and the fact that you now have a space, I think, but that’s because you have the flexibility to access that space. I understand the challenges. You have one single child. I imagine that if you had two, it would be twice as difficult.
Among the challenges, for you, do you have access to subsidized child care, for example, or do you have to pay full price to have a child in daycare? Is it a set price per day, independently of how many hours?
Ms. Savard-Shaw: My son is four years old and goes to kindergarten or to pre-school. I was saying that I don’t have access to a space before- and after-school care services, because there are very few French-language before-school and after-school programs in minority communities. So yes, I do have a space at school. He goes to French-language school, but I don’t have access to before- and after-school services. When we had child care, French-language spaces were very limited.
There aren’t really any truly bilingual child care centres. They say they are bilingual, but they’re not. When we had access to child care, I think I was paying $1,900 a month until last year when, yes, the costs were reduced thanks to the federal system. It was a private child care centre, because I have never been able to access public child care.
[English]
The Chair: Ms. Savard-Shaw, perhaps it’s the translation or the interpretation, but when you say extracurricular care, do you mean after-school daycare?
Ms. Savard-Shaw: Yes. After-school and before-school care.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: My question is for Ms. Wolff. I’m sorry, Ms. Wolff, I had to leave and didn’t hear your testimony. If anyone has answered my question already, I apologize.
Given that we would like to move towards universal and equitable access to early learning and child care services, can you explain what role the private sector and home-based child care can play in attaining this goal? How can we ensure that children’s rights are respected and that their best interests are taken into account in private and home-based child care settings?
[English]
Ms. Wolff: Thank you very much for that question, Senator Cormier. There are many witnesses coming before you from academia, from economics and from child care organizations that have said a lot about what it means at the individual level and the system level when there is private child care in the child care system and the implications of that in terms of accessibility and quality. What I would hope to add to that, coming from a child rights frame, is that children’s right to child care is a right. My hope is that Canada’s ambition is to work at some stage towards the progressive realization of this right, towards a universal system for children that is a public good — being a right.
When you start putting prices, costs and fees against children’s rights, whether it’s birth registration or child care, it becomes problematic. It can take the state, which is responsible as the duty bearer to deliver that right, a step removed in terms of its authority and accountability. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has produced a general comment, a guidance for states on how to respect children’s rights in the early years in child care systems — general comment 7. It really envisions an early child care system that is organized by the state and delivered by the state, communities and civil society organizations.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: Thank you for your answer. In your brief to the Standing House Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, or HUMA, you suggest that a child rights impact assessment be conducted to evaluate the impact of Bill C-35 on children and youth and to ensure that their best interests are protected. To your knowledge, has such an assessment been carried out?
[English]
Ms. Wolff: A child rights impact assessment. No, I don’t believe it was. I think happily now the Department of Justice has just released in July of this year a child rights impact assessment process and tool. It’s not required like gender-based assessment plus across federal government departments — hopefully one day it will be — because surely children’s rights should be a priority for governments and a lens given how easy it is to overlook the impacts of decisions on them and their rights.
It’s possible now to conduct a child rights impact assessment, and hopefully it’s something that in the future the good senators in this committee might begin to ask for against legislation or other issues that come before you. It is certainly possible to do that now.
The Chair: Colleagues, we will go into a short second round. Three minutes each.
Senator Seidman: I still have a lot of questions, but I’m going to try to restrict them to you, Mr. Macdonald, for the moment.
The report you produced is really, truly impressive, and I know that it required a huge, labour-intensive amount of work. It bears examination and taking it pretty seriously on our part.
I want to go back to a recommendation. It might have been touched on before, but we have heard a lot about this issue in previous witness testimony. So your recommendation number 3 says:
Considering the widening gap between not-for-profit and for-profit fees, we recommend that expansion is exclusively public and non-profit, and that governments put in place clear public accountability to support this.
I like your use of public accountability, and you have used the word “public” many times in your presentation. That’s important for transparency purposes and democratic accountability, and that terminology has also been used in presentation to us previously.
Could you explain that recommendation, please? Help us understand the importance of our expansion exclusively public and not profit, and how we could put in place public accountability to support that?
Mr. Macdonald: Thank you very much for the compliments on the reports. It certainly was a lot of work, but I’m glad that folks have found it helpful in understanding how the CWELCC program is rolling out.
In terms of the expansion and potentially to Senator Cormier’s question, at present, the private sector remains an important part of child care provision in many big cities. Depending on the city, licensed family child care does as well. In some cities, it is an important driver of the provision of child care, and, frankly, family child care will become more important as some of the unregulated homes move into the regulated sector because of the fee difference.
But the question is about expansion. If the expansion were to be in the private sector, you potentially need more money to have the same expansion because you have to pay a profit margin in there. This fee gap is growing largely because of some centres choosing to be part of and others choosing not to be a part of these fee reduction programs. So that I think speaks to the economics of why you would want to do a public expansion that will likely be cheaper on a per seat basis.
In terms of public accountability, in my mind, locating centre spaces is as important as their creation, that it isn’t purely about any creation, anywhere, but it is about creation in particular places. That can’t happen without public planning and public accountability. The federal government obviously shouldn’t be doing this. Provinces or better yet municipalities should be doing this. But this is a totally new approach to child care planning, frankly. In some places like Ontario, for instance, if there are renovations to schools, there is space created for child care underneath that renovation. That is, to some degree, the school board is planning this to some degree. But broadly, this isn’t a public-planning process of where these spaces should go, where they are needed, where they already are, and that’s one of the big pieces that missing from the CWELCC program. Certainly, there are commitments to the new space creation from the provinces and territories, but a plan to locate them, that doesn’t exist, and it’s important, frankly. It’s as important as space creation itself.
[Translation]
Senator Moncion: I have a statistics question. Do you have any information on the number of mothers and fathers who stay at home with children who could go to daycare but don’t have a space? Do you also know the number of people who have children in daycare but can’t find a space in a $10-a-day or subsidized child care centre? Do you have the statistics on all those who are left behind?
I would like to add that in the report that the government is due to release, this information will not be available and will not be accounted for.
[English]
Mr. Macdonald: Thanks so much for the question.
In terms of the number of people that want a space but can’t find one, it’s not something that we have calculated specifically. We have certainly looked at wait-lists and the availability of new spaces. We have asked various versions of a wait-list question, how long to get a space and so on. The question we found worked the best, which was the one we implemented on the last survey, was, “Can your centre take a child in the next week? Is there extra space right now, in your centre, for a child?” Broadly, the system is full. Places like Edmonton, Windsor, about a third of centres could take a new child in the next week, but most cities, it’s under 10%. So there is no additional space. The system is full. Every additional space that’s created will likely be filled as a result of this shortfall. Now, the question of how many parents could use a system now that fees are much lower, I haven’t calculated that.
The second part of that question — which escapes me now.
Senator Moncion: Parents that are at home with children, the ones that are not calculated by the report from the government. What we’re going to be receiving as information is very limited. And there are a lot of people that are not going to be counted. So I —
Mr. Macdonald: I see —
The Chair: Mr. Macdonald, if you could get that answer to us in writing because we are now running short of time. Thank you so much, witnesses, for your efforts in broadening our understanding with evidence and statistics. That’s always very helpful. We thank you very much for spending your time with us.
Colleagues, before we adjourn, I wanted to provide you with a quick update about the schedule next week. We will be proceeding to clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-35 on Wednesday, November 8. A reminder to all of you to kindly — I’m going to strike the word kindly — a reminder to all of you to consult with the law clerk’s office when you are drafting your amendments. Even when the wording of the amendments is provided by witnesses, it is advisable — advisable, underlined — to please consult with the law clerk. The analysts are available with the drafting of observations. Please reach out either to the law clerk or to the analyst if you need assistance with the translation of observations.
The committee has received a request from New Brunswick, the Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development, requesting to appear on Bill C-35. They have therefore been invited to appear at the start of our meeting on November 8. We will proceed to clause by clause immediately afterwards. I wish to, again, thank all of you and our witnesses. With that, colleagues, our meeting is adjourned.
(The committee adjourned.)