Moved second reading of Bill S-282, An Act respecting a national strategy for children and youth in Canada.

She said: Honourable senators, if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there. Honourable colleagues, I think it’s safe to say that we all agree on this simple principle: The best way to arrive at a destination is to plan to get there. In other words, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Unfortunately, because of our lack of vision, direction and intention, we are planning to fail our children.

Canada’s 8 million children and youth are being failed by our public policies, including those meant to serve them. Why? Because we design policies without clear outcomes in mind. We implement programs without the resources needed to make conclusive change. We fail to support cross-sector collaboration or listen to those who need the most help.

We have become content with leaving thousands of children behind. Canada doesn’t have a vision for the health and well‑being of our children and youth, and so they are left to be supported by a patchwork of programs, supports and benefits. This is not good enough.

This is why I have tabled before you today Bill S-282, An Act respecting a national strategy for children and youth in Canada.

This bill is a response to decades of failed approaches and half measures. It calls on the government to build a comprehensive strategy for our children and youth that sets a path to fulfill our obligation to give them healthy, happy and hopeful childhoods.

This bill sets out a framework for a strategy that identifies areas where we are failing children as well as areas where we are making important progress, and proposes a detailed plan of action to change the status quo once and for all, to ensure that every child is safe, happy and healthy.

This bill proposes that such a strategy would require defined outcomes and quantifiable indicators, because if we are serious about moving the needle for children here in Canada, we need good data to guide us along the way.

Bill S-282 is not and does not create the strategy, but sets a framework out for the creation of a strategy. A strong strategy, as set out in this bill, must be created through extensive consultation with Canadians. It would be a defined vision that reflects our values as a country when it comes to our children.

Colleagues, this is not a new idea. Over half of the 38 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, countries already have what the OECD calls “. . . an integrated policy plan for child well-being,” which is defined as “. . . a policy document that sets out the government’s approach to promoting child outcomes in several well-being domains. . . .” These plans aim to integrate existing — and sometimes competing — policy initiatives into a cohesive strategy for young people and formalizes cooperation between those responsible for implementing those policies.

Consider the New Zealand example. New Zealand set out ambitious targets to eradicate child poverty and took aggressive action through an action plan that captures the voice of children. This plan, adopted in legislation in late 2018, was New Zealand’s Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy. This legislative framework provides a powerful vision for the lives of New Zealand’s children and a plan to make it a reality, which involves collaboration between government and civil society rather than more silos.

Their plan has clear outcomes based on the social, economic and environmental factors necessary for children to thrive. Every outcome includes key actions and indicators for progress. New Zealand has also committed to accountability through annual reports on the strategy. Further, the government must report on the impact of every federal budget on reducing child poverty.

With this strategy, New Zealand has made its commitments to children clear and given the public the tools to hold them to account for delivering on their promises. This is a comprehensive approach to child and youth well-being. While we must have our own made-in-Canada strategy, this example points to what is possible.

Another jurisdiction that has taken strides in this area is the European Union. In 2019, the President of the European Commission announced the creation of a European Child Guarantee. This plan was a response to the social exclusion and poverty facing 25 million children throughout the EU. The European Child Guarantee’s goal is to guarantee children access to a set of basic services. It calls on member states to guarantee free early childhood education and care, free education, free health care, healthy nutrition and adequate housing. These are the basic building blocks to any safe, healthy and hopeful childhood.

In 2023, a pilot of the European Child Guarantee, delivered in partnership with UNICEF, concluded with promising results. Over 30,000 children and young adults across four countries — Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece and Italy — were reached with services and interventions based on the EU’s commitment to a vision centred on thriving, healthy childhoods.

These international developments demonstrate for us that the idea of presenting a dedicated vision for children’s well-being in a given country, paired with a plan to achieve it, is catching on worldwide. Faced with evidence that they are not adequately supporting the well-being of their youngest residents, countries around the world are choosing to take action rather than accept the status quo. We in Canada must choose action instead of accepting the status quo.

Colleagues, I can’t assume that you know of all the issues facing our children, but I think you are aware of many. You see them in your communities. You read about them in the media. You may even have seen them in your own circles. We need to assess where we are doing well regarding our aspirations for our children and where we are falling short.

And we are falling short, colleagues. We are failing to adequately support our children and youth in several areas. Too many children are falling through the gaps of our patchwork system of policies and programs. Let me highlight for you just a few of the areas where our current approach is less than successful — and where a strategy might help.

We are losing the battle on child poverty. Despite achieving a record low in child poverty rates in 2020, in large part due to CERB, over 1 million children in Canada still live in poverty today. In fact, we know that poverty rates are now rebounding as income supports stagnate and the cost of living rises. Campaign 2000’s recent child poverty report card notes that child poverty rates rose from 13.5% in 2020 to 15.6% a year later, a change that indicates over 160,000 kids plunged into poverty.

Families faced with poverty struggle to meet their children’s fundamental needs, whether that’s stable housing, access to education or food security. In other words, poverty has a crippling impact on a child’s well-being and can have devastating long-term consequences on children’s ability to learn and acquire skills, which in turn hinders their ability to find employment and avoid poverty as adults. The longer children live in poverty, the more likely they will experience poverty as adults.

In 1989, the House of Commons resolved to end child poverty in Canada by the year 2000. Yet almost a quarter of a decade past that deadline, over 1 million children in Canada still live in poverty. If simply setting a target was enough, we would have solved this problem long ago.

This is why we need a strategy, colleagues, because targets without specific plans are empty if they don’t come with that very detailed evaluation, planning and monitoring. A strategy would not only set a target; it would give us a concrete plan of action matched with a series of indicators to constantly assess the effectiveness of what we’re doing. Children living in poverty and their families deserve more than just empty words — they are relying on us to create a sound plan that works.

But poverty is just one issue. Throughout Canada, many young children are experiencing long and costly delays in receiving essential health care services.

A growing body of evidence underscores the impact of decades of underinvestment in children’s health. According to data from 2018, only 35% of non-emergency surgeries in Canadian paediatric hospitals were completed within the recommended safe clinical time frame. Due to the pandemic, the situation was worsened, of course. The situation for mental health services is no better. In my province of Ontario, about 28,000 Ontario children and youth with mental health needs were reportedly on wait lists for treatment in 2020, with some waiting up to two and a half years for intensive treatment.

On top of this, an estimated 200,000 Ontario children with mental health issues received no mental health services at all because they lived in rural, remote or Northern communities where treatment programs are scarce.

Tossing more money at the situation is not the solution. It is not, on its own, enough. What is needed is a plan — a plan to move us towards equitable access to these essential services so that all children get care when they need it. Increasing funding needs to come with a commitment to monitor children’s health outcomes, the effectiveness of the spending across Canada and to assess the effectiveness of the interventions we’re using, not just the spending. This is why we need a strategy.

Alongside long-standing issues are ones that are rapidly developing and evolving in real time. Climate change and child safety are two such examples.

Climate change is a large, global and interconnected issue, one that is already having significant economic and social impacts across all aspects of our lives. The Canadian Paediatric Society has referred to climate change as the single largest global health threat of the 21st century. Increased injuries, deaths from extreme weather, negative effects on food yields leading to food insecurity, risk of displacement due to rising sea levels and negative health impacts from rising pollution are just a few of the consequences children will and are already facing — and this is just the impacts on children’s health.

What about the other impacts? Economic turmoil from a global economy under stress or educational disruptions due to natural disasters exacerbated by climate change? Are we doing enough and are we adequately preparing to support children through the impacts of rapidly changing climate?

As we take steps to address the climate crisis, we need to be ready to assess and to address the impacts on children as they arise. A strategy will help us here. In dealing with issues in constant flux, focusing on our desired outcomes will help us target what is most important and determine which interventions will have the biggest impact.

For example, let’s say one of the strategy’s desired outcomes is that children in Canada are safe and healthy. If progress in this area slows or reverses due to the impacts of climate change, the indicators the strategy monitors would alert us to this change — this new direction — and prompt us to quickly alter or adjust our policies and programs. A strategy would allow us to become more responsive, more effective in the steps we need to take to support our kids.

This world is a dangerous place for children, both online and offline. Our children are growing up in a digital age with widespread internet use that has become the norm. This increased digital exposure comes with challenges, such as a difficulty concentrating, inadequate sleep, decreased physical activity, weight gain and notably the heightened risk of cybervictimization. Cybervictimization is the experience of being targeted, harassed or victimized through online channels.

In 2019, Statistics Canada reported that 25% of youth aged 12 to 17 had encountered cyberbullying, including aggressive text messages or unwanted sexual content on various online platforms. As the internet evolves and changes, we need to do the same or risk leaving our children and youth behind.

The offline world is not necessarily safer. An alarming 2018 study published by Statistics Canada found that around 72% of Canadians experienced at least one incident of child maltreatment defined as an incident of physical or sexual abuse, harsh parenting or witnessing violence before the age of 15 years. High-profile cases of abuse in team sports and community-based organizations have shown that abuse of children in schools, sports and other community settings continues to be a pervasive threat here in Canada. We need to do better when it comes to young people’s safety, both online and off.

Children’s safety is a multi-faceted issue that has implications for all levels of government and our communities as a whole. This is a problem that can’t be solved by welfare agencies or by police alone. A national strategy would help us cohesively grasp the true scale of the issues, identify the causes and evaluate where our current efforts are falling short. What’s working and what’s not? It would help us implement a concrete plan to ensure that every child in Canada grows up safe and secure.

What all of these issues come down to is children’s well-being. Well-being is not just about being physically healthy, but also about feeling good emotionally, mentally and socially. It refers to a person’s overall state of health and happiness. When someone has a good sense of well-being, they tend to have more positive relationships, feel satisfied with their life and can cope with stress and challenges. Well-being is about feeling balanced, content and able to enjoy life to its fullest. As a country, we expect the government to ensure the basic building blocks toward well-being. This is not a high bar to clear, but unfortunately we are failing to meet it.

When children are waiting months for necessary medical care or are unable to get support for their mental health, they are not well. When children are going hungry or are being harmed by adults who are meant to protect them, they are not well. When we allow children to fall through the cracks of our patchwork system, they are not well. We can and we must do better.

Fortunately, we have something to build on. There is some good news. Existing programs aimed at children undoubtedly play crucial roles in supporting children across the country. However, these programs, while making positive strides, often fall short of the kind of strategic, holistic thinking we need to have for our children.

Consider the Canada Child Benefit, a tax-free benefit paid monthly to help eligible families with the cost of raising their children. For many families, this translates to hundreds of dollars of support every month. The Canada Child Benefit is a commendable effort to alleviate child poverty and has indeed made a significant impact by lifting approximately 250,000 children out of poverty. Nevertheless, the recent increase in child poverty rates underscores the fragility of the progress that has been made, and the need for more robust, sustained efforts is clearly there.

This is an example of an area where we have not gone far enough. We have the potential to eradicate child poverty as a policy, and yet over 1 million children in Canada continue to live in poverty today. What are our goals, and how are we measuring our progress? Lifting a quarter of a million children out of poverty is noticeable, but is that enough? A strategy would help us answer these questions and set a better path for moving ahead.

Child care is another area where we have made significant progress with the recent Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreements. However, the program faces challenges in its early stages. Infrastructure and support for child care workers remain areas of concern. Two weeks ago, I travelled across Ontario, met with a number of child care operators, and I have heard from operators that the program does not currently provide enough money to pay staff well or to maintain operations at the same level of quality as they had known before.

Colleagues, aiming for affordability is a good first step, but cost reductions cannot be the only goal in our effort. We need a strategic approach centred on the well-being of children that uses early learning as one of the many tools and programs that will enable our kids and youth to reach their full potential.

Jordan’s Principle and the Inuit Child First Initiative are important programs addressing the unique needs of First Nations and Inuit children but face implementation challenges. Jordan’s Principle is a child-first principle that ensures timely access to products, services and supports for all First Nations children in Canada, on- and off-reserve. Funding can help with a wide range of health, social and educational needs. Similarly, the Inuit Child First Initiative ensures that all Inuit children in Canada have access, in a timely manner, to the essential government-funded health, social and educational products, services and supports that they need. These are some of the good things.

However, delays in processing requests, as seen with Jordan’s Principle, and stalled applications in the Inuit Child First Initiative reveal systemic issues that make timely access to these services difficult. There have also been concerns that the government is applying Jordan’s Principle too narrowly. The recent $23-billion settlement for chronic underfunding of on‑reserve child welfare services makes it clear that we still have work to do to adequately support Indigenous children in Canada.

Make no mistake; these programs are good and do important work, but without a plan, without knowing concretely what outcomes we want and without data to measure our progress, we are destined to fail.

These programs help our children some of the time. Designed in silos, they don’t work together holistically to support children’s well-being. More significantly, there are no clear goals for how these programs will support children or enough resources to meet the need right now. The result is that we leave many children to fall through the cracks of this unsuccessful patchwork of programs.

There are many more issues and programs I could highlight. What I hope is clear to you is that the challenges facing our children and youth are both varied and complex, and many are intertwined, interlinked and connected. It would be a mistake to treat these issues as individual, siloed challenges. Simple one-off interventions, therefore, will not suffice. From health care to poverty to safety and more, the issues facing youth are interconnected and require a systematic approach and coordination between different levels of government and civil society.

Colleagues, it is clear to me that we are failing our children because we are applying band-aids to counter the issues of the day rather than more fulsome and interconnected solutions that set kids on the path to a better future. I know that we can do better. It starts with developing a comprehensive plan that identifies where we need to improve and outlines that roadmap to better outcomes.

In fact, this is not an entirely new idea in the Canadian context. Under the leadership of the Honourable Landon Pearson, in 2004, A Canada Fit for Children was a plan that set out the outcomes we want for our children and the steps we needed to take. A collaborative effort, the plan was intended for everyone involved with caring for children and youth. Crucially, it was developed with input from many Canadians, including children and youth, and identified ways to promote and to protect children’s rights.

We must build on this and other important work done by Canadians to create a country fit for our children. We must end the patchwork of good intentions and unmet targets. We must provide a path forward for our children, their families and their caregivers. We need a strategic plan with detailed objectives, clearly defined indicators that speak to progress, that help us rationalize what we’re doing and how we’re doing it, and specific actions we must take to achieve them.

We need thoughtful, meaningful policies that not only end harm but support our children’s well-being to the fullest. This is why this bill is so important. There is a need for transformative change. There is a need for us to think more clearly about what we want for our children. We just need to do the work.

You may have seen my recent report on the creation of a national strategy, entitled From Vision to Reality. If you haven’t, I encourage you to read it. This collaborative report was the result of a series of round tables and engagements with young people and stakeholders across Canada. These discussions served to confirm the need for a national strategy and to shape what the strategy might look like. This report and the stakeholders it represents have shaped Bill S-282. For that reason, I’d like to present the details of the bill through the lens of this report.

We heard from all the participants that Canada needs a national strategy. They said Canada’s current government infrastructure for children and youth is failing young Canadians and that federal budgets fail to adequately focus on children and youth. Instead, the focus is on programs geared to serving the public in general, and their impact on children is more often than not an afterthought. They made clear that a lack of comprehensive strategy creates this patchwork system of support, requiring provinces to create disjointed policies to try to fill the gaps. This patchwork is currently leaving many children behind, including the most vulnerable children, whom we should all be taking care of.

But what should a strategy include? While the government would need to do a comprehensive, countrywide consultation, our round table participants had several guidelines to share. They were clear that the strategy needs to take a rights-based approach, led by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. They called for an intersectional strategy that adopts the principle of “no child left behind” and advances substantive equality. Importantly, they made clear that the strategy should include an aim to increase awareness among children and youth of their rights, and to help develop their confidence as active citizens. Overall, they called for a broad roadmap toward the respect of children’s rights and the implementation of policies that ensure their health and well-being.

Clause 4(2)(a) of the bill, which outlines mandatory guidelines, reflects many of these comments. It notes that the objectives of the strategy must include a high and consistent standard of living for children and youth across Canada and the complete elimination of child poverty.

Highlighting the importance of our international commitments and the need to take a rights-based approach, it also calls for the government objectives to include full compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the optional protocols which we have signed on to, as well as the provisions of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP, relating to children and youth.

I think we all agree, colleagues, on the importance of these measures.

Another area of consensus was the need for clear targets and outcomes. As one participant put it:

. . . any strategy developed for the implementation of children’s rights must go beyond statements of policy and principle, to set real and achievable targets in relation to the full range of economic, social and cultural, and civic and political rights for all children.

These should include specific, measurable and ambitious outcomes for children and youth. They also noted the strategy should collect and analyze data to ensure accountability, with emphasis on the need for disaggregated data. There should be a plan to share this data alongside information on the progress of the strategy.

These comments influenced the remainder of clause 4(2), and calls for the government to identify a series of outcomes and quantifiable indicators aligned with internationally accepted standards that would, if met, demonstrate the Government of Canada’s objectives have been met; provide an evidence-based assessment of whether these objectives have been met; outline a detailed plan to address unmet objectives, including a description of immediate actions and possible preventive measures; and identify what resources would be required to implement the strategy.

The bill also calls on the government to propose oversight and accountability mechanisms, including public monitoring of the strategy’s implementation; continued consultation with a wide range of stakeholders on the implementation of the strategy; the ability to update the strategy to address emerging needs; the consideration of complaints from children and youth about how this strategy is being implemented; and, finally, parliamentary oversight over the implementation.

When asked who should be involved in the development of the strategy, one round table participant said:

Young people have a difficult time getting authority figures to listen to them, respect their perspectives, and really consider their lived experiences.

Children and youth often face an uphill battle to be heard on the issues that affect them. It is clear that the development process for a national strategy should focus on including the voices of young Canadians of all backgrounds.

This is reflected in clause 4(3) of the bill, which lists children and youth first in the list of those to be consulted on the strategy.

They were clear that the consultation process should include representation from all the provinces, territories, municipal governments, academic institutions and civil society. The consensus from the round tables is that unilateral action by the federal government would be completely insufficient. Buy-in and participation by the provinces will be important in the creation and operation of a national strategy. A truly national strategy should include a coordinating mechanism between levels of government.

That is why clause 4(3) also notes that the minister responsible for the strategy must consult with representatives of provincial and municipal governments, as well as representatives of Indigenous governing bodies and organizations that serve and represent First Nations, Inuit and Métis children and youth. It also calls for the inclusion of relevant stakeholders, including representatives from organizations that serve and advocate for children and youth.

In this process, the government must deliberately seek out the voices that reflect the diversity of all children and youth in Canada and their experiences, and build a process that recognizes and addresses the challenges in obtaining input from all communities. This list outlining who must be consulted is not meant to be an exhaustive one, and the bill invites the minister to consult with whomever else they deem appropriate.

Accountability was a major area of concern highlighted in the round tables. Regarding the need for public reporting, we heard:

The strategy and reporting can be disseminated to all levels, but particularly the public, because the public tool is really handy to keep things accountable.

To address these concerns, the bill lays out several accountability measures. First, it requires that within six months of Royal Assent, and every six months after that until the national strategy is tabled, the minister must table a progress report in each house of Parliament setting out the progress of the development of the strategy and a list of those who have been consulted, as long as they consent to sharing their participation. This will give the public insight into the progress of the strategy’s development, and give young people, stakeholders and other parties time to join the consultations before they end, if they feel that certain vital viewpoints have been missed.

The bill gives the government two years after Royal Assent to develop the national strategy for children and youth, with a report outlining the strategy to be tabled in both houses of Parliament by that date. It must also be published on a government website within 10 days of tabling.

Multiple participants called for regular review periods of the strategy so that it stays relevant as the challenges facing children and youth evolve. That is why the bill calls for a review every five years in the form of a report outlining the extent to which the national strategy for children and youth has been implemented and an assessment of whether the strategy’s objectives have been met or changed, as well as any other relevant conclusions or recommendations about the strategy.

In conclusion, colleagues, I will be blunt: Canada needs this. Canada’s children need this. They need to see an end to the patchwork of half measures that characterize our approach to our children. They need leaders to speak with and listen to children, parents, teachers, caregivers, civil society and advocates in order to make sure that no one is left behind.

Children need us to say “no more” to child poverty and poor access to health care. They need us to protect them online and offline, and from the harms brought by climate change. They need us to protect and defend their rights.

They need a vision for a future where every child can flourish, and for us to be willing to put in the work to do this. Canada’s children and youth need us to step up.

One of the unsaid premises of this bill is that, despite the history and the challenges we have faced as a country in delivering for our children, I believe that parliamentarians from every side care about our children — that we want to build a country fit for our children, and that we are collectively ready to set this up. That’s why I urge you to support Bill S-282.

I look forward to hearing other colleagues debate this bill, and sending it to committee for further study.

Thank you. Meegwetch.

The question you ask is so important because it speaks to the entire strategy. How will the strategy do what it claims to want to do?

First of all, it allows us, as a country, to decide what we value and what we want for every child and to set that principle down in writing and establish it as our goal — the desired outcome — that we follow through with the information, frankly, we already have.

We have a lot of this information. There is a lot of civil society that can provide us with reams of data which tell us where we are failing, where things are actually working and what interventions have the most impact. If we can use an evaluative process that follows through on a declaration that starts with, “We want to eradicate child poverty,” then we can revisit and reassess as we go along from month to month and year to year in order to understand if it is working. What is working? How can we repurpose investments over here — that are not impactful — into the types of interventions that we know work? Then, we can accelerate, build momentum and move things along with real investment.

Many may actually say, “What is the cost of this?” I would propose that we save money by understanding where our investments work, and by pulling money from areas where, frankly, we are throwing mud against the wall and it is not sticking.

We need to understand that, and we need to bring in new policies that align so that we are constantly building, constantly refining and moving the needle more effectively — so we are distributing and upscaling what works in smaller areas and communities more broadly across our country, and we are allowing children to benefit from this well-organized, deliberate approach.