Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House and support this Conservative motion sponsored by the member for Edmonton--Spruce Grove. The motion calls upon the government to recognize that it is creating a two tier child care system which discriminates against families who choose to stay home or find care outside of a publicly funded system.
I rose in the House just a few short months ago to debate a similar motion put forward by our party. During that debate, I quoted from a report entitled “Canadian Attitudes on the Family”, which I think is worth repeating again today. It stated:
--many Canadian parents feel trapped by economic pressures and are not able to make the sort of choices they would like for their families. Sometimes, of course, this is unavoidable. Economic reality has a way of interfering with our dreams...
Similarly, in February of this year, a Vanier Institute of the Family study on family aspirations found that the vast majority of mothers and fathers with preschool children would prefer to stay home and raise them, but if they cannot, their strong preference would be to have a partner or another family member look after their children rather than placing them in a formal day care centre.
The Vanier study complemented a Statistics Canada analysis, also released in February of this year, which found that in 2001 53% of Canadian children between the ages of six months and five years old were in some form of child care. That is up from 42% in 1995. About one in three children are being looked after by relatives, one in three by non-relatives in someone else's home, and the remaining one in three are being looked after in day care centres.
The Liberal government's $5 billion investment in day care only supports the last one-third of children out of the 53%. It totally ignores the two-thirds of Canadian children who are receiving care from someone other than their parents. As pointed out by many of my colleagues today, the Liberal government is also ignoring those children whose parents work shifts and would be unable to enroll in one of these federally funded day care centres.
The Conservative Party of Canada is totally opposed to the Liberals' two tier child care system. The Conservative Party of Canada's plan is universal and equitable. We will give cash subsidies directly to parents so they can make their own child care choices. We will treat all parents, all families and all children equally. We will allow Canadian families to make the choices that would best serve their needs and the needs of their children.
During our last debate on this issue, in February, I pointed out that we were neglecting in this House and, for that matter, in this country, to recognize and address increasing health costs and decreasing productivity, of which our finance minister spoke in the media this past week. We also fail to recognize the collapsing social relationships due to workplace stress and our failure to achieve work-life balances.
We are failing to deal with the realities of work and life conflicts, which are having a huge impact on our country and our society. In a National Post article of March 10, Deborah Jones, a workplace consultant, said that we are going in a dangerous direction in Canada in terms of work hours and workloads affecting life and balance.
A Conference Board of Canada study found that the percentage of Canadians who reported moderate and high levels of stress as a result of work-family imbalance increased from 26.7% in 1989 to 46.2% in 1999. This work-family imbalance is costing employers billions of dollars in sick leave and lost working time, which again translates into decreased productivity for companies.
In 2003 Health Canada funded a study entitled “Work-Life Conflict in Canada in the New Millennium”. It also found that high job stress has doubled and job satisfaction and employee loyalty have dropped. There is so much stress in the workplace. The government has come up with a plan that will address only a very small percentage.
My time is up, but I would encourage the government to take this plan back to the drawing board, recognizing that out of the 53% of Canadians with children under the age of five, this addresses only one-third of them. It is $5 billion for one-third of 53%. The program is not going to work. It is big government and there are big failures in this program.