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THE CHILD CARE ISSUE STILL HAUNTS US

The Liberals, together with the opposition NDP and Bloc Quebecois parties, dominate the House of Commons because the Conservatives have only 124 seats in a 305 seat Parliament. The dominant opposition are determined that Canada will have a national child care plan, even if Canadians don’t want one. That is, when Canadians voted in the Conservative government in January 2006, they made it clear that they preferred the approach taken by the Conservatives on child care of direct payments to parents, rather than the establishment of a national child care program. However, the opposition parties in the House of Commons apparently believe that Canadians don’t know what’s good for them and are, instead, determinedly pushing through Parliament a national child care program.

House of Commons and Child Care

The NDP brought in Bill C-303 for a national child care program, which is euphemistically referred to as an “early childhood education program.” Bill C-303 has now been reviewed by committee and it will have third and final reading and, undoubtedly, be quickly passed by the opposition, who will gang up on the Conservatives when Parliament resumes sitting in the fall.

The Senate and Child Care

Meanwhile, the Liberal dominated Senate has not been idle on the issue of a national child care plan. It decided that it shouldn’t wait for Bill C-303 to wind its tedious way through the House of Commons and, instead, initiated its own study of the issue through the Senate Social Affairs Committee.

The Senate Committee Hearings

The Senate Committee had its first sitting on a national child care program on April 20, 2007 and, naturally, its first witnesses were representatives from the feminist lobby group, the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada (CCAC). The latter association clearly enjoyed testifying before the sympathetic committee. It was reminiscent of the good times when the association was “top dog”, i.e., the authority on all matters relating to child care in Canada. It acquired this influential position because of the fact that since 1983 it was heavily funded by the Liberal Government to the tune of millions of dollars in order to lobby for a national child care program. The Conservative government stopped this funding in 2006. It didn’t take the witnesses from CCAC long into their testimony to point out the tragedy experienced by child care in Canada because of the “uncaring” Conservative government cutting off their funding, which, they declared, was “cruel”. As a result of these cuts, the CCAC “research” on child care, which it had been duly feeding the child care industry over the years, was no longer available. This, they claimed, was a tremendous loss to the nation, not to mention the child care industry itself.

The testimony of the CCAC was followed by that of several professors who had researched the child care issue. For example, Professor Kevin Milligan, Professor of Economics, University of British Columbia testified on his recent research on Quebec’s universal subsidized child care. Regarding the Quebec $7.00 per day system, he stated that studies of this system proved that children’s behaviour was more aggressive, that children experienced more anxiety, and were more hyperactive than children reared at home. Also, the children’s motor development and health were worse than that of at home children. Further, parenting became less consistent and even hostile, as the quality of the relationship between the parents worsened. (See Reality March April 2006, page 10.) This was bad news for the Committee and was information they didn’t want to hear.

Professor Douglas Willms from the University of New Brunswick then provided testimony before the Committee which was more to its liking in that he stated that there must be a substantial increase in public funding of child care services. But Professor Willms didn’t look to a universal child care program as a cure-all. Rather, he stated there are several different kinds of interventions to help children, such as specific targeting of children who fall off-track, helping families with low social-economic status, providing parenting training, etc. Again, it was not exactly what the Committee was looking for.

Further Feminist Testimony

The Committee was considerably cheered, however, by the testimony of feminist activist, Martha Friendly, Co-coordinator, Child Care Resources and Research Unit, University of Toronto. The latter institute had also been generously funded by the former Liberal government since 1985, but is no longer, as its funding, too, was cut off by the Conservatives in 2006. As a result, it has been forced to become attached to the University of Guelph, minus all the generous financial backing of the federal taxpayer that it had previously enjoyed.

Ms. Friendly, needless to say, advocated a national, universal, not-for-profit (government controlled) child care program with the government setting national standards. Providing money to parents for child care, either by voucher or payment or subsidy, did not meet with the approval of Ms. Friendly.

REAL Women has applied to appear before the Committee, no doubt, to the chagrin of the feminists and their supporters on this Committee.

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