Hon. Art Eggleton:

Honourable senators, I am delighted to speak to the report entitled Early Childhood Education and Care: Next Steps, which was tabled in the Senate on April 28 after receiving support at the committee from members on both sides of this chamber.

Honourable senators are aware that this report had its genesis in a study conducted by the OECD in 2006, a study that placed Canada last among 14 countries in terms of spending on child care and early learning.

In a more recent report by UNICEF, Canada again placed last in the ranking of early child care services offered by 25 developed countries. This house understood that record, that performance, was simply not good enough. Therefore, in February of last year, the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, which I chair, was given two tasks. The first was to examine the state of early learning and child care in Canada. The second was to study and report on the declaration, the challenge, made in the OECD report that said:

. . . significant energies and funding will need to be invested in the field to create a universal system in tune with the needs of a full employment economy, with greater gender equity and with new understandings of how young children develop and learn.

I want to thank all the members and staff of our committee for their hard work and the long hours that they committed to these issues. In particular, I want to acknowledge former Senator Marilyn Trenholme Counsell, who is with us today in the gallery, whose passion and energy were the driving force behind our efforts.

During the course of our hearings, the committee heard from child care providers and advocates from across the country. We heard from Human Resources and Skills Development Canada as well as from experts in childhood development from both Canada and abroad. We conducted an in depth analysis of the OECD reports as they relate to Canada as well as several other countries whose early learning and child care programs were more developed than our own.

We found that while we claim to understand the importance of early learning and child scare and applaud its intentions, we are falling behind, failing our children and our families and jeopardizing our future.

I do not intend to repeat the content of our report — it is over 200 pages — but I will quickly touch on some of the key findings and issues.

The OECD's work was extremely instructive in identifying what successful countries are doing in terms of early learning and child care and where Canada can do better. The best models view early learning as part of the continuum of education, not separate from it. I will repeat that sentence because it is fundamental to the points I want to make today. The best models view early learning as part of the continuum of education, not separate from it.

Many countries, for example, are providing at least two years of kindergarten before children enter compulsory schooling. The goal is to have children arrive in school ready to learn, because children who arrive at school ready to learn become adults prepared to succeed.

Recognizing that early learning is so important, its impact on later life outcome so powerful, the OECD recommends a systematic, integrated approach, including a coordinated policy framework with a lead ministry.

Best practices also point to providing universal access, recognizing that quality of early learning is too often determined by the income of parents. For example, in the United States only 45 per cent of three-to five-year-olds from low income groups are in early childhood programs compared to 75 per cent from wealthier families. In Canada only 20 per cent of single parents and 5 per cent of disadvantaged groups are covered.

The OECD also points out that countries with successful early childhood policies make a substantial investment in services and infrastructure, in training staff and ensuring quality. For example, Australia has a nationwide quality accreditation system that evaluates learning experiences of children and the relationships among children, parents and their careers, as well as the types and quality of programs offered in child care centres nationwide.

Finally, the best programs are systematic in collecting data, monitoring progress and measuring outcomes. This information helps to ensure that progress is made, access is expanded and best practices are adopted.

Honourable senators, our committee was enormously impressed by the testimony we heard about the effect of early learning in child care on the development of young children.

"Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man," is the Jesuit saying. One of the most consistent and compelling messages to come from experts we heard was the critical importance of early childhood development in influencing the kind of adults that children become. What we sow in childhood, we reap in adulthood.

This saying is true of everything from brain development to health and social outcomes. For example, Dr. Fraser Mustard pointed out that brain development in the early years establishes neurological pathways that affect health, learning and behaviour for life.

The remarkable power of quality early learning and child care improves reading and math scores, boosts IQ and improves graduation rates. In terms of value for money, early learning is among the best investments any society can make. As the adviser on Healthy Children and Youth to the Minister of Health, Dr. Kellie Leitch reported recently, every $1 invested in early childhood development is worth between $3 and $18 later in life.

Those numbers are compelling. They include everything from added tax revenue from higher wages to cost savings on social welfare, health and justice systems. It is an outstanding return on investment with solid savings to the taxpayer. It is a good investment in our future.

Seen from this perspective, early learning and child care is about much more than transferring care-giving responsibility from parent to someone else. It is about shaping our future by investing in our children. The quality of nurturing received between birth and age eight has a decisive, long-lasting impact on learning behaviour and health. A productive, fulfilling life is greatly facilitated by seamless support and care during this critical period of child development.

Yet, at the moment, there is a disconnect. An American study found that 85 per cent of brain development takes place by age three. However, only four per cent of educational dollars are spent to that point in time.

Here in Canada, we understand the importance of quality child care, but we do not provide enough of it. We acknowledge the role early learning plays in preparing children for school and intellectual development, but treat it as separate from the overall education policy.

Indeed, while education in Canada is seen as a public entitlement, child care is treated as a private problem. The result is an artificial divide between the critical pre-school years and the child's overall development. The outcome, too often, is that children arrive at school unprepared to learn.

Honourable senators, I know a wide variety of opinions exists on how best to deliver programs when it comes to early learning and child care. However, I think we can all agree on one thing: Parents are the first and most important providers of early learning opportunities and care for their children. There is no substitute for good parenting. Ideally, every child would have a full-time parent at home with them during those first critical years.

However, as responsible policy-makers, we must deal with the world as it is, not with how it was or how we wish it would be. The reality is that today, 70 per cent of families have two parents working, up from 30 per cent in the 1970s.

Moreover, in our mobile society, few people live near relatives who can help out. What is the result? Parents look to their communities and governments to make a greater commitment to providing quality early childhood education and care.

Honourable senators, parents work hard. They are trying to make ends meet. They have demanding work schedules. They are doing the best for their kids, but, too often, not receiving the support or options they need. For too many of these families, quality child care is unaffordable or unavailable.

We also know that in an ideal world, every child would be born into families where parents have the skills to undertake the responsibilities they face. Again, reality is often different.

Our committee heard compelling evidence of the importance of the first 24 months of life on the "wiring of the brain" and on preparing children for later development, and how critical it is that parenting skills be taught.

Most of our provinces provide some form of training and support for parents, but too often parenting skills, school readiness, child care, pre-school and kindergarten are treated separately. The various parts are working in silos, not in sync.

Similarly, wonderful research is taking place across the country, but it is not being brought together into national evidence on early child development. In some cases, we do not know if we are making progress because we lack the data to make solid assessments. This lack of information is not only an academic issue. It has real consequences for how policy is written or not written in Canada. As Dr. Mustard put it succinctly, "No data, no problem, no policy."

On the federal side, a number of initiatives are aimed at helping families, especially through the tax system. The Universal Child Care Benefit is helpful, although it does not nearly meet the cost of quality early learning and child care outside the home. Also, the Child Tax Credit is not refundable, which means that it does not help low-income parents who do not pay taxes. We need to rethink direct support to parents through federally funded transfers to ensure that funds are provided to families who need them.

In those areas where the federal government has direct responsibility — such as Aboriginal children — the record is not encouraging. Incidents of infant mortality, premature birth, low birth rates, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, behaviour challenges as well as cognitive and language delays are all more prevalent in our Aboriginal communities.

Clearly, much more work is to be done by all levels of government to give early learning and child care the importance and profile it deserves. What is needed is a political commitment to policies that shape a child's development and show a nation's priorities.

Our committee has made four specific recommendations to translate good intentions into public policy.

First, appoint a minister of state for children and youth. We have a Minister of State for Seniors — why not one for youth? This appointment would not only send a clear signal that Canada understands the importance of young people for our future, but would provide focus and direction to advance quality early learning, parenting programs, child care and research into human development.

Second, appoint a national advisory council on children to advise that minister of state. Draw on the best minds from across the country. Have parents, experts in child development, Aboriginal and community leaders and parliamentarians all contributing ideas and providing feedback.

Third, call a series of meetings of federal, provincial and territorial ministers responsible for children within one year to establish a pan-Canadian framework to provide policies and programs to support children and their families and establish a federal-provincial-territorial council of ministers responsible for early learning, child care and parental supports. There is no doubt that the provincial responsibility, together with the federal responsibility, requires a lot of collaboration.

Such a framework will recognize and respect that, while federal leadership is essential, it is provincial governments that regulate early learning and make decisions about funding. We need to allow provincial governments the flexibility to respond to local priorities.

Fourth, create a system of data collection, evaluation and research so that we can measure progress. See how we are doing. As the OECD report advised:

A federal secretariat could support . . . the work of the provinces in early education and care, build bridges between certification and training regimes across the country, develop pan-Canadian standards and encourage common data collection. A dedicated federal department could also take the lead in the field of research and public information.

Honourable senators, past governments have responded to the needs of families in their times through, for example, the establishment of the Family Allowance in 1945, The Child Care Expense Deduction in 1971 and the Canada Child Tax Benefit in 1997. It is now time to meet the new demands of our time. We need to respond to the reality of two-income families and lone parents. We need to respond to the inequity of access — to the differences in opportunity between the rich and the poor and between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. We need to respond to the variability in quality. We need to prepare our children to compete in an economy driven by ideas, ingenuity and imagination — an economy where our children will compete against highly educated children from around the world.

Honourable senators, why not early learning for our children? Why not unlock the potential inside every child? Why not a minister devoted to making this happen? Why not a country that matches its rhetoric about its children with its resources for those children? Why not make the Government of Canada a champion for families in the 21st century?

Recent Statements from Liberal Senators