Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call second reading of Bill 12, Insurance (Vehicle) Amendment Act, and other statutes.

[2:50 p.m.]

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 12 — INSURANCE (VEHICLE)
AMENDMENT ACT, 2021

Hon. M. Farnworth: It’s my pleasure to rise today to speak about Bill 12, the Insurance (Vehicle) Amendment Act, 2021. All of the amendments in Bill 12 are technical in nature, and none represent a shift in policy, but they are nonetheless necessary to validate past and current government policy and to ensure that the legal framework for vehicle insurance, including enhanced care, works as intended. Bill 12 addresses legal questions that have developed as a result of two proposed class action suits that could have significant financial implications for both ratepayers and taxpayers.

First, the bill amends the Insurance (Vehicle) Act to validate past payments by ICBC for the costs of health-related services arising from injuries sustained in vehicle accidents and makes explicit the legal authority for future payments. ICBC has been reimbursing government for these costs for decades. In fact, more than decades, I guess you could say, dating all the way back to the 1980s, through successive governments.

Second, the bill will validate basic premiums set for owner certificates on the basis of geographic region between August 2003 and May 2018 to address an ambiguity in that period. Bill 12 also amends the Insurance (Vehicle) Act to clarify the priority of coverage between vehicle insurers and the priority of coverage between vehicle insurance and other sources of compensation so that enhanced care works as intended. In addition, Bill 12 makes a number of technical amendments to the Insurance (Vehicle) Act to ensure that regulations are clearly authorized so that the legislative framework works as intended.

Finally, Bill 12 amends the Motor Vehicle Act to change the minimum refund amount from $5 to $1 to ensure consistency between refunds under the Motor Vehicle Act and refunds under the Insurance (Vehicle) Act. With that, I look forward to comments from colleagues.

I move second reading.

M. Morris: I look forward to a briefing on the bill, prior to the committee stage on this. But Bill 12 strengthens the monopoly or oligopoly that ICBC has on the auto insurance industry that we have in British Columbia. The legislation allows ICBC to assume total control over developing, delivering and administrating their policies and their products; determining eligibility on claims and eligibility on medical services; adjudicating; and mediating disputes and appeals against their own decisions.

Bill 12 is the heavy hand of government retroactively eliminating any court processes, arbitration processes, payment options and plans that were in existence prior to May 1, 2021. The saga of no-fault insurance — something that the NDP expressly confirmed, prior to the 2017 election, that they were not going to do — continues. Arguments have been consistently raised by many groups and individuals respecting the loss of their rights to seek legal assistance and guidance in assessing and arguing ICBC decisions on their behalf.

Internally, ICBC determines how an injured person is treated and compensated. Internally, ICBC will determine outcomes of complaints and concerns from individuals. And internally, ICBC, through their newly appointed fairness officer, will assess whether an individual is treated fairly or not.

[2:55 p.m.]

In respect to the fairness officer, I have the utmost respect for Michael Skinner, whom I’ve worked with in the past when I was an adjudicator with the Health Professions Review Board. There’s no doubt in my mind that his recommendations will be fair and transparent. My concern, however, is still the same as I expressed during debate on this issue last spring. The fairness officer has no decision-making authorities and is paid by ICBC. This arrangement does not reflect the level of independence required for this position.

I received several calls from concerned individuals who have been injured in accidents and are confused and perplexed trying to navigate the new system of enhanced care. The regulations describing process and benefits are lengthy and confusing for a citizen not used to navigating these documents, more so when an individual is suffering stress and confusion after being involved in an accident. I’ll be monitoring this new enhanced-care approach closely as I remain in touch with the persons involved in the process.

I look forward to the committee stage on Bill 12, when myself and colleagues will take a deeper dive into the many concerns we have with this legislation.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, I recognize the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General to close debate.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I appreciate the comments from the member opposite. Obviously, he wants a briefing. He will be able to get a full briefing.

With that, I will take my seat as you put the vote to second reading.

Motion approved.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting after today.

Bill 12, Insurance (Vehicle) Amendment Act, 2021, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call second reading of Bill 15, the Early Learning and Child Care Act.

BILL 15 — EARLY LEARNING AND
CHILD CARE ACT

Hon. M. Dean: I move that the bill be now read a second time.

I’m very honoured to be speaking to you today from the traditional territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

This Early Learning and Child Care Act has been a long time coming. It is an important part of our work to make life better for B.C. families as we continue to build a strong foundation for an inclusive, universal child care system that will benefit families for generations.

The new act combines and streamlines the existing Child Care B.C. Act and the Child Care Subsidy Act. It will provide the legislative foundation for our future universal system while also supporting our commitments under our Canada-wide early learning and child care agreement with the government of Canada.

The act will enable us to keep child care costs down for parents by providing authority to create new regulations that set limits on child care fees to better support B.C. families now and for generations to come. Once enacted, the act will require the minister responsible to report out annually on progress. That means families, our partners, communities and the public will have access to consistent, clear data on all the work we are doing to build the system of child care in B.C.

We are committed to making it easier for child care providers to receive grants to help children with disabilities and other support needs to fully participate in their programs. We also need to better support Indigenous rights holders in designing and delivering distinctions-based child care that best meets the needs of their families and communities.

This legislation is the first step to making sure that Indigenous child care is at the forefront of our work. We’ll work closely with Indigenous rights holders, the First Nations Leadership Council, Métis Nation B.C., the B.C. Aboriginal Child Care Society and other Indigenous partners and communities to continue planning for long-term systemic change — change that will improve access to culturally safe and enriching child care for Indigenous families throughout the province.

[3:00 p.m.]

Under the strong and wonderful and inspiring leadership of my colleague the Minister of State for Child Care, who will be speaking to this bill at length, and with the passion that she has shown for Childcare B.C., we’ve made important progress for the past four years in improving access to affordable, quality and inclusive child care. Families across the province are already feeling the benefits. Many families are saving up to $1,600 a month per child on child care through our Childcare B.C. affordability measures.

The Minister of State has been leading the charge and working just so wonderfully with partners to create new child care spaces, reduce fees for parents and support early childhood educators, who, as we all know, are the workforce behind the workforce. She’s been creating a new social program, and that is a huge undertaking.

We owe it to families across B.C. to deliver this long overdue service. We’re going to do the work to get it right. The ELCC Act will help us get there and support more families every step of the way.

K. Kirkpatrick: Thank you to the minister.

Today I rise to debate Bill 15, the Early Learning and Child Care Act. I’m excited because this is the first opportunity I’ve had to respond to an act related to my critic’s role.

We have two critical issues facing child care in British Columbia today. The first is a critical shortage of spaces. The second is a critical lack of qualified early childhood educators to work in these daycares. So any solution to the child care crisis in British Columbia has to address both of these issues simultaneously. One cannot be solved without the other.

We support, absolutely, affordable and accessible child care. Child care has to be a priority for this government. This government ran on a promise of $10-a-day child care and universal child care in the past two elections, so I am pleased to see that this will be moving forward.

Today, out of 125,000 existing spaces, just over 3,000 are $10-a-day spaces in these pilot sites, and none of those are new spaces. These pilot sites have not opened up access to any more families. In fact, just over 6,000 new spaces have actually opened by government’s own numbers. There remains a critical shortage of child care for young people with special needs.

The lack of affordable child care spaces is a significant barrier for mothers who want to return to work or pursue an education. This contributes to gender inequality and weakens the B.C. economy. The lack of affordable child care keeps women in poverty.

Access to high-quality and affordable child care can also impact the well-being of children, their experiences of poverty, their risk of being separated from parents and the likelihood of being cared for in an informal stopgap arrangement. Children themselves have the right to quality child care independent from those of the women caring for them.

If the goal of this government is to increase spaces, it can’t be done without a dramatic increase in attracting and retaining people into the child care profession. I know there is another bill, which will be tabled, which will address some of this, but this is in parallel with the bill that’s being introduced now.

I’ve been hearing from both child care operators and parents that reduced hours and closures for daycares due to a lack of staffing are happening all over British Columbia, particularly in smaller communities. I’ve also heard, and I’ve shared with the minister, the challenges that child care providers are having with the heavy administrative and reporting burden of all of the different programs that they are working with under this ministry. These pressures, or these administrative burdens, are actually adding to the operational costs of running these organizations.

I’m going to give you an example of a recent announcement, and I’ve just heard from child care providers and from ECE workers on that. The $2-an-hour wage enhancement that was going to be added to ECE workers’ pay, which was supposed to be effective in September of 2021, is now being deferred until March of 2022.

[3:05 p.m.]

Now, obviously, that has an impact on ECE workers. It’s going to be paid retroactively. They will be getting that money, but they’re not going to be getting that money until the end of the budget year. I’m not quite sure why that’s happening. Here’s an example of an unintended consequence which adds administrative burden to the child care child care operators themselves.

What this is going to mean is that each employee…. Every employer is going to have to track down any em­ployee that worked for them between September and the end of December of last year, whether they worked for two hours or four hours. Once they find them, then they will pay them the $2 an hour enhancement for the number of hours they worked, but this is now in another payroll year.

What this is going to require…. Now there’s going to be a payroll implication to this. There’s going to be additional payroll that has to be run. There’s going to be additional calculations for tax. There’s going to be an additional form that has to be filed with the Canada Revenue Agency that is going to adjust a previous year’s income. If you’ve got five or ten or 15 employees, this can be quite substantial.

A lot of daycare providers are moms running small daycares. They don’t have the capacity or the accounting department in order to be able to do things like this. I asked the ministry about this and was told: “Well, that’s pretty much their responsibility as employers to deal with these kinds of things.”

I do think we really need to be alive to the fact that the kinds of changes that happen within legislation and within policy in this government can have significant impacts, just in order to be able to comply and file the paperwork and do all of those things that are required.

I would really like to see us bring together the rich fabric of the whole child care community: the not-for-profits, public spaces, Montessori, enhanced learning, private providers. Again, many of those are small businesses owned by women. Child care should be integrated into our communities. It should be on school grounds, long-term-care homes, community centres, new housing developments, shopping centres, private homes. Child care should be central to all communities.

Limiting child care operators limits parents’ choices and options. I’m concerned — although it’s hard to know what constraints will be put on, in particular, the privately owned daycares — because a lot of what this act is envisioning is actually going to be carried out in regulation. It’s a very light framework for me to actually be able to make determinations on what the true impact is going to be.

Provincial legislation can certainly help with this crisis, but government also needs to work with the municipalities to streamline licensing requirements across British Columbia. Now daycare providers will look at what is happening provincially in terms of what their requirements are, the Ministry of Health requirements and all of that. Then, on top of that, municipalities have the ability to add additional requirements. An example would be the city of Vancouver. It has some of the most stringent requirements for child care facilities anywhere in Canada. This is in a city and in a community with the highest cost of land, construction, leased space.

The impact of all of these additional requirements is to push up the cost of providing child care. Of course, in return, that means that to cover those additional expenses, the cost of child care continues to increase. In fact — and I find this very interesting — the physical space requirement per daycare space in British Columbia is higher than in all other provinces.

I’ll give you an example of that. I’m using really easy numbers so that I don’t get myself confused. If you’ve got a 2,000-square-foot daycare facility here in British Columbia, you can get licensed for approximately 50 child care spaces. If you have that same 2,000-square-foot space in Ontario, you can get licensed for 60 child care spaces. If you have that 2,000-square-foot space in Alberta, you can get licensed for 74 spaces.

[3:10 p.m.]

If you could imagine…. If we could do some work with the Ministry of Health, which is actually the one that regulates this, and we could come together collectively, we would be able to add, back of the envelope, 29,000 spaces in a very short period of time simply by changing — nothing is simple; I understand that — the licensing requirements right now. There are more straightforward ways to be able to get to the means that we’re trying to get to.

Now, as I said, simultaneously we can open 100,000 spaces, but if we don’t have any ECE workers to work in them, then we still have the problem.

When the minister introduced this bill in June, she said that it is “…an important step towards our goal of making inclusive, universal child care a reality in British Columbia.” The minister repeated that today. So notwithstanding this assertion, nowhere in this proposed act is universality or inclusiveness even referenced.

Again I go back to the challenge with the fact that most of this, the meat of this — I’m a vegetarian, but I can still use that term — is really going to be in the regulation. It’s difficult when those things are happening outside of this House so that we’re not able to debate them and look at how that’s going to impact daycare, child care providers and families.

Two key elements of this act. One is moving the majority of the policy work to the Provincial Child Care Council. Really, the breadth of what their decision-making…. I shouldn’t say decision-making. They make recommendations to the minister. But they’re making recommendations to the minister on critical, critical issues that are very broad and require deep subject matter expertise in a number of different areas. I’ll give some examples of that in a moment.

The second piece, again, as the minister referenced — producing an annual report on the actions the province has taken to support their commitments to the provision of child care. Now, I read the service plans every year, and I look at the information that is publicly posted in terms of how many additional spaces are coming online. So I have to question if we really require legislation to give us largely what is already required to be published by government. Just a commitment to transparency would perhaps take the place of a majority of the actual act that’s being presented to us.

I do want to, if we can…. Bear with me for a moment. I’m still new at this. I’m just going to take a look at some comments that I’ve got, specific to the Child Care Council. Yes, I also appreciate I do get to go to committee stage, so I am really still speaking at this point. The Provincial Child Care Council can be made up of up to 21 people. I really am concerned that….

They can make recommendations to the minister about accessibility, affordability, inclusiveness — that’s fine — and child care grants and child care benefits. So those decisions will be made outside of here. What really concerns me is that this group will also have the ability to make recommendations on social, cultural, educational, emotional, cognitive and physical development of children.

I have been involved in organizations that work with children and families. I’ve been involved in the running of a non-profit daycare. What you’re describing here in this act really requires that you’re going to have behavioural psychologists as part of this. You’ll have to have non-profit operators, for-profit operators, geographies from across British Columbia, different sizes, different makeups of institutions and child care providers. I just want to be mindful that there’s a lot of responsibility in making decisions and recommendations around the cognitive and behavioural development of our children.

Then there is the ability for this provincial council to also make recommendations and decisions on any other matter related to child care. I think that that’s pretty big in terms of what we’re expecting.

The second piece was the annual reporting. I’ve already addressed that. As I don’t see…. I look forward to the opportunity in committee to learn more about why it is important to actually have something that I believe there are much easier ways to come about getting and to actually have that in legislation.

[3:15 p.m.]

I thank you very much for your time and for the opportunity to speak to this bill. I do look forward to the committee stage to learn more about some of the things that are perhaps not as evident to me here. I really look forward to hearing from this government on an overarching strategy as to how we are going to move child care provision forward in the province of B.C.

Hon. K. Chen: It is so great to be back in this Legislature, and I’m so honoured and grateful to have this opportunity to rise today to speak to this very important piece of legislation.

I also want to, first, recognize that I’m speaking here from the traditional territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people.

As many of the members in this chamber know, our government, since 2017, has put child care and early learning as a priority for our government because we know it is so critical to invest in early learning and care. It’s good for our young children, good for our families, good for our economy and for B.C. communities.

As a working mom and an immigrant, without family in Canada other than my seven-year-old son, I know firsthand, every single day, personally what it is like to struggle to find child care — almost every day, even this morning as I dropped off my son to before- and after-school care and rushed my way here to Victoria. The child care struggles that many parents are facing are something that our government has to work on, and we have been since 2017, to address the child care chaos that has existed in our province for many, many years.

Parents have been trying our best to continue to work, to pursue our career and educational goals, to provide the best we can for our children with the help of early childhood educators and also child care professionals in this province so that we can contribute to the economy, so we can raise our young children to live, work and learn in this beautiful province we call home.

I’m super grateful that, as the Minister of State for Child Care since 2017, I’ve had the opportunity to learn from so many parents, advocates, early learning and care professionals, families and partners who believe in investing in child care so we can work together to bring in universal, inclusive early learning and care systems for all B.C. families.

It is important to remember that when we started this work in 2017, the child care system at the time, according to many child care advocates, was chaotic. There was no major investment into the sector. Parents were struggling to afford child care, which can be more than expensive than their housing costs — their mortgage and rent payments. And even if they can afford child care, they may not be able to find a space at all. Parents were struggling to make ends meet and to be able to contribute to our economy at the same time. And then early childhood educators have been struggling for years with low wages and lack of support.

But thanks to everyone who has been working together so hard during the past four years, we are fixing this chaos. We are making progress. We are making major investments, with over 2.3 billion provincial dollars since the 2018 budget to be able to build a new social program together.

That is why today we are bringing forward this legislation and also starting a new legislative journey to ensure that the work we’ve done during the past four years — to bring down the cost of child care, to accelerate the creation of spaces, to support early childhood educators and to bring more inclusive early learning and care opportunities — can be enshrined in law.

To make the foundation so strong that it would be so hard for any government to take this work away. To ensure that parents will continue to see a fee reduction in their child care fees. To ensure that parents will be able to access more early learning and care services. To ensure that early childhood educators are better compensated and that all this work will not be taken away easily.

It has happened before, as we look back in B.C.’s history. It is so important to remember that history. That’s why it is so important to support this legislation today, to make that foundation so strong.

Looking back in history, as some of you may know, the current act actually reintroduces some aspects of the B.C. Benefits Act which was first introduced back in 1996. In 1996, the B.C. NDP government at the time introduced the B.C. Benefit (Child Care) Act, now entitled B.C. Benefits (Child Care Subsidy) Act.

[3:20 p.m.]

It was a legislation that was introduced to begin building a child care system that includes provisions on affordability, quality, inclusion and accessibility, followed by regulations required to make it work in 1997. Think about that. That was 1997.

Then in March 2001, the B.C. NDP government at the time brought in more legislative changes that provided for $14-a-day child care and also $7-a-day before- and after-school care. That was 2001. However, following an election that happened, the former B.C. Liberal government at the time repealed sections of that legislation that made those affordability programs possible. They actually took away benefits and support for families who really needed and counted on those measures, and millions of dollars were gone after the new government came into power.

Then, as we all know the history, after 2001, when it comes to child care, we faced a 16-year-long gap without significant investment or strategies to address the child care chaos that many advocates described. Early childhood educators were also facing struggles because of that 16-year-long gap that resulted in many children missing out on opportunities to access quality early learning programs that would support healthy development and a strong foundation for those children, especially for children who required extra support.

The 16-year-long gap resulted in countless parents giving up their careers or educational dreams or not even able to make ends meet, such as a parent I met, a single mother who mentioned to me how she had to give up her pretty decent, stable, paying jobs because she could not afford or find child care for a few years. Even though she was able to return to the workforce after a few years of having to rely on social assistance, she describes to me those years as the hardest time of her life for herself and also for her young children. The lack of quality, affordable, early learning and care services is really hurtful for our families, just like the story that I mentioned.

It’s not just the families and young children. The 16-year-long gap resulted in early childhood educators struggling with low wages and leaving the field. It resulted in employers being left scrambling to recruit their employees back from maternity leave, with many skilled, valuable workers pulling out of the job market because of the child care shortage.

The lack of investment in child care hurt our families, our young children and our economy. It was not right. That is why in 2017, 20 years after the B.C. Benefits Act was first introduced and was left, unfortunately, unfinished, we restarted this journey again in 2017 to invest in early learning and care, with a comprehensive strategy to build a new social program for B.C. families. When the opposition critic talks about comprehensive strategies, please look into our child care plan.

We have over three dozen initiatives building on affordability, quality and accessibility, and I’m very thankful for all the partners, including the Third Party. We have worked together for the first three years of this work to be able to build this foundation together. Our government believes that all children deserve access to inclusive, quality early learning supports that will help them along the path to success. Our government believes that investing in child care is good for, again, our young children, especially those who require extra support in their early years, and for families, early childhood educators and our economy.

It is actually also critical to our work on reconciliation as we build more Indigenous-led child care with our Indigenous partners throughout this province. Investing in child care is actually also critical to gender equity. As we know, historically it’s mostly mothers and women who have been carrying the responsibility of child care. If you look into the early learning and child care sector, 97 percent of early learning and childhood educators are women. That is a number that really has to get us thinking about how investing in child care is critical to gender equity.

Our work since Budget 2018 has already brought a lot of relief to B.C. families, including tens of thousands of families that now are benefiting from a fee reduction program, along with many of them that are already seeing $10-a-day child care, outside the prototype site. I know members and the media love to put a focus on the prototype site, but it is really important to remember that through our three affordability measures — the fee reduction, the affordable child care benefit and also the prototype site — tens of thousands of families are seeing a fee reduction, and thousands of families are already benefiting from $10-a-day or no-cost-at-all child care.

[3:25 p.m.]

I know the opposition critic loves to talk about spaces. Let me remind of the history again. Since 2017, as soon as we started the new spaces program, we have already funded and supported the creation of 26,000 spaces. About 70 percent of the spaces are going into operation this year, which is historic. This is the fastest space creation that ever happened in B.C.’s history.

To put that in perspective, in the 16-year-long gap during those years, they funded about half of the spaces that our government has funded in three short years. We’ve really expedited that program to find opportunities to work with local governments, providers, Indigenous communities, school districts, non-profits and also different types of providers, including small family providers, to find opportunities to build more high-quality, licensed spaces.

We have start-up funding. We have funding to help to maintain spaces. We have a lot of different programs to help to address the diverse needs of B.C. families. We also have funding to partner with Indigenous communities through Aboriginal Head Start programs, through Indigenous-led early learning and care opportunities.

We know we have to do more. We also know that we cannot create an inclusive, universal, child care system without early childhood educators. That is why our government has started over a dozen strategies, looking at how we support the wages of early childhood educators through recruitment and retention struggles, and also support their training and education.

Those strategies have really supported a lot of early childhood educators to stay in the field, including the very popular wage enhancement program, which will be topping up early childhood educator wages with a $4-an-hour wage enhancement, which is historic. It has never happened before. Actually, if you look in history, it was taken away before, but now we’re bringing it back, doing more and doing an across-the-board, across-sector wage enhancement for early childhood educators.

We have also been focusing on inclusion. We have been investing in supported child development programs that will support children who require extra support and ensure that the diverse needs of families and young children are being addressed. I could go on and on about the investments that we’ve made, but of course I know we have more work to do. That is why the Early Learning and Child Care Act, this legislation, will provide the legislative foundation for our future inclusive universal system.

First of all, we will support the use of grants for Indigenous-led child care, following our commitment. Again, B.C. is the first province to bring in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. We need to ensure that we can work with Indigenous communities to provide culturally inclusive early learning and care opportunities.

Child care has to be inclusive for all children with diverse needs who require different supports, and also children from diverse backgrounds and socioeconomic status. If we truly believe in creating an equitable society and future for our chil­dren and future generations, child care is the start. This is the legislation that will provide that foundation. Inclusion has to be a key part of it. I know the critic has mentioned how she does not see inclusion in this legislation. I hope she did read the legislation. There are, specifically, requirements and mentions of how inclusive child care is critical. It is a central part of this legislation.

This legislation will also require the province to report out on the progress we’ve made on child care through an annual report. It actually holds the government accountable. It holds my work, as a minister of state, accountable. It also ensures that we can keep track of the progress and investment we’ve made. We can review it and ensure that there is always a focus on child care. Child care should stay as a top priority for any provincial government that comes into this Legislature and governs.

This legislation also establishes a new regulation-making power that can set limits to improve affordability measures through regulations so that we can continue to have the ability to provide more high-quality care services that are affordable for parents, across B.C. communities, who are struggling with the cost of living, the cost of housing and other pressures. Child care should not be a burden or a barrier to B.C. families. At the same time, this legislation also supports our work to meet targets outlined in the Canada-wide early learning and child care agreement with the federal government.

[3:30 p.m.]

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

As many members may know, we’ve had a really busy summer. The child care team has not stopped. We had a busy summer working on significant negotiations with the federal government. B.C. has become the first province in Canada to sign an agreement with the federal government to start the national child care plan for B.C. families. In this agreement, the federal government will invest $3.2 billion over five years towards our shared goals of providing quality, affordable, flexible and inclusive child care.

Both the federal agreement and this Early Learning and Child Care Act commit to the same visions and also commit to increasing transparency and accountability for governments by requiring annual reports on the progress we’ve made. For example, among the tens of thousands of families who are already seeing a reduction in their child care fees for the first time in B.C.’s history…. Many of them are receiving the $10-a-day or no-cost child care in the child care prototype sites. There are about 25 families at this moment who are part of this program, and we will expand the program with this federal agreement to 12,500 spaces.

Then, by the end of December 2022, through our agreement with the federal government, we will also reduce fees for parents of young children under the age of six, up to by an average of 50 percent. This is a significant commitment joined by the federal government with the provincial government’s efforts to make child care more affordable so that families can access child care regardless of their needs and situation. That is why we also need to support programs, to support children who require extra support.

Through our budget this year and through the work that we’ve done during the past few years, already thousands more children are benefiting from supported child development and the Aboriginal supported child development program, and that’s on top of the work that we’ve been doing since 2018.

Those supported child development programs offer a range of consulting and support services to children, families, child care centres, with the goal of enabling children with support needs to participate fully in inclusive child care settings. That’s a critical part of this legislation — to ensure we can continue this journey to make sure we have affordable, high-quality inclusive early learning opportunities.

This legislation will also build on this work by supporting the use of child care grants to improve, inclusive of child care, which means it will be easier for child care providers to receive grants to help children with support needs. So we are supporting children, supporting families. And, of course, we have to support early childhood educators and providers to address that need.

We know that the needs of families in B.C. are diverse and will continue to evolve. While we have achieved a lot during the past few years, we still have much more work to do. That is why this legislation, the Early Learning and Child Care Act, once passed, will continue to be updated as we grow our system. But this foundation and this legislation will help to reduce barriers so all B.C. families can access affordable, quality, inclusive child care, which is in the best interests of our young children, families and all British Columbians, especially as we go through this really challenging time together with our economic recovery.

This investment and this work is long overdue. Again, this is a journey that first started in the late ’90s, got interrupted for years and then restarted again in 2017. We really owe it to the families to deliver this critical social program.

To close, I want to thank all the parents, grandparents, families, community members, early learning care professionals, advocates and people who have been pushing hard for inclusive, universal child care. I also really want to take this opportunity to thank all of our child care team members from the ministry, from my office, whether they’re present or past — including the MLA now for Vancouver-Hastings, who was one of the first people to start this journey, to start this conversation, to work on this legislation with me — and to everyone who has been working with us so closely to bring so many positive changes since 2017.

That is why I hope that all members in this House will support this historical bill that will help us carry out the important work for families today and for generations to come and that will keep us on track of the investment that we’ve made in child care since 2018 to create this new social program for B.C. families and to really build a more equitable future for all.

[3:35 p.m.]

With that, hon. Speaker, I want to thank you and all the members of the House for your time. I hope all members in this House will support this legislation.

S. Furstenau: I’ve listened with great interest to the comments of the Minister of State for Child Care and the critic for the official opposition, and I think what’s heartening is that there seems to be agreement that child care is an essential component of a healthy society, that we should be striving for an equitable and inclusive system of child care in this province and that we should also be ensuring that it is available and affordable and does not have barriers.

I think sometimes when we debate these kinds of things and these kinds of systems, we forget about the actual individuals. So it’s storytime. Here we go.

I’ve had child care in my life for pretty much my whole life. I have this very early memory at about 3½ or four years old of being at a child care centre. It was in a basement. It was quite dark. There wasn’t a lot of art on the walls or anything like that. The memory that stands out the very most for me is that every day we were made to lie down, whether we were tired or not. There were these mats on the floor, and we all had to lie down.

I remember just lying there awake most days and feeling quite bored, frankly, and kind of wishing for the day to be over. My parents started to notice that at the end of the day, I would come home and I wasn’t very cheerful or chipper and didn’t really have much to say.

Right around that time in Edmonton, where I grew up, the city of Edmonton was partnering with a non-profit to open up an early childhood education centre, an experiment. My parents had the fortuitous — lucky for me — vision to make sure that I actually got a spot in that early childhood education centre.

On the first day, I remember my dad taking me. I didn’t want to go, because I knew what daycare meant, and I didn’t like it very much. But we got there into this beautiful building — bright and big windows and lots of space. There was a cook named Winnie, and Winnie made hot lunch for the kids every single day. Winnie coaxed me into the kitchen and told me that today she was baking a cake, because it was one of the kids’ birthdays, and that I could spend the day with Winnie in that kitchen baking a cake with her. Winnie convinced me to stay that day.

For the next year, I had the most extraordinary experience in this early childhood education centre. I learned to read. I learned to write. I learned to experience what it felt like to be in a child care centre that really saw me and my fellow peers as whole human beings.

I remember when I went off to grade 1 — because we didn’t have kindergarten — and grade 2 and grade 3, I would stop by my old child care centre and say hi to the teachers, because I’d grown so attached to them in that one year. I wanted to show them how well I was doing in elementary because I knew that they cared.

The quality of child care shapes our lives. I became a learner in that one year. I also experienced what it felt like to be valued as a person in my society in that one year, and that set me on a course.

While we talk about systems and child care and all of these things, I think it’s really important for us to centre these children in our efforts and our work and to try to imagine what it is we’re trying to achieve — that every child has this experience of being valued, of being cared for, of having the richest learning experience, of having a learning experience that reflects their culture and their identity and their community, and to know that they are deeply cared for and loved when they go to child care every day.

[3:40 p.m.]

To have legislation right now that is creating these annual reports on progress is a positive step. But I think we have to constantly be reassessing where we are trying to get to, what we are learning along the way and what we are incorporating into that vision, because, of course, we can’t know everything, at this point.

One of the things I’d like to commend the Minister of State for Child Care on is that this summer, when I had a child care provider reach out to me from my constituency office and indicate that she had some concerns about the progress of a child care centre that’s going up in Cowichan, the minister of state extended an invitation to hear from that early childhood educator and listened.

I think that’s also going to be essential, that the people who are part of creating these systems — the child care providers, the early childhood educators, the parents — are going to be the most valuable source of input as this system gets built. And it is essential to keep that door open and to keep the ability for them to provide input and information as this goes along so that it can be a continual effort to do better. That’s what we should be striving for.

The reports on progress can identify how we’re going along that path, but the work will always have to be on ensuring there is clarity and ongoing clarification of what it looks like when we’ve achieved the goals. I expect that will be a work-in-progress forever. There will always be room for improvement. There will always be ways to make this better.

Our children today face realities that are very different from what we grew up with. The compounding issues of climate change, inequality, biodiversity loss, a lack of affordable housing and a strain on our social cohesion all put the pressure on us to ensure that children can be educated in an innovative, responsive, engaging and thoughtful manner that prepares them for the, really, almost unthinkable challenges that they’re going to face as they get older.

In that regard, the early learning years are just as important as the K-to-12 grades. As it was with my experience, those years are the years that turn us into learners, that tell us about what place we occupy in our society. And just small things, like having child care centres where the toilets and the sinks are child-size, tell children: “We see you. This is designed for you. This is a world we’ve built because you are at the centre, not us. We’re at the centre of all this other world, but in here, children are the centre.”

We need to move away from the sense of scarcity that has imbued our public education system for far too long and make sure that we don’t transport that scarcity into our early childhood and child care systems. Public education has been consistently underfunded. There aren’t enough teachers. There is not enough space. There aren’t enough resources. There aren’t enough education assistants. This is a message to our children: “You just don’t get enough. You don’t deserve it.” We have to make sure, in creating these early years programs, that the message of scarcity isn’t there. It needs to be a message of abundance.

I think the other thing we want to be sure of is…. As the minister of state pointed out, there has been a big emphasis on spaces. Of course, yes, parents need child care spaces, but spaces are not all created equal. To ensure that we do move towards a more equitable society, we have to ensure that resources are provided so that there is that equitable experience for children — no matter where they live in the province, no matter what their background — and, in particular, Indigenous-led child care programs that ensure that culture and language are at the centre of those programs.

[3:45 p.m.]

We currently really do have a mosaic, but I think it’s important for this government and the minister of state to determine how much of that mosaic is for-profit and how much of it is not. With the shift over to the Ministry of Education, ultimately, our goal has always been, as a caucus, that we see early childhood education for three- and four-year-olds incorporated into our public education system and thereby accessible to every child — every three- and four-year-old — and recognized as having the same value as the rest of the years in education and that the teachers are valued the same.

I think that it’s a hopeful step to see where we’re at. I know that this legislation and this kind of progress report have been called for by the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of B.C. I think it’s important that this government continues to work with them but, of course, also with parents, teachers, educators, families. I think that reducing the cost for child care obviously has been a high priority. It’s going to continue to be an important outcome. Not being able to afford child care is an impediment to far too many families, and there is much more work to be done.

It’s a positive step, this legislation, but I encourage this government and the Minister of State for Child Care to not lose sight of the extraordinarily important work that will need to continue to go into this file and to remain focused on those small but very important people at the centre of it: the children that we all care about so much.

R. Merrifield: Today I rise for parents, for women and, mostly, for children, our next generation. I was really appreciative that the Leader of the Third Party talked so passionately about our next generation.

I am very passionate about child care. Having three kids of my own and two stepkids, I am very familiar with all of the different child care opportunities that are out there. Over the course of my career and my lifetime, I’ve seen parents leave the workforce in droves, not because they weren’t passionate about their careers and not because they didn’t need the money to make ends meet. In fact, just this summer I had a family move out of my constituency simply because they could not find child care.

We have an accessibility issue, and when they can find it, it’s incredibly expensive. So this critical shortage of spaces leads to the costs of the spaces. Currently, we’re about 50,000 spaces short, and this government has only delivered 6,300 over the course of the last four years.

Since the 2017 provincial election, the NDP promised to deliver 24,000 new child care spaces and universal $10-a-day child care. However, there is a huge discrepancy between their rhetoric and their action. The pilot sites that were just mentioned are actually only 3,000, and 3,000 of just over 100,000 — that’s less than 3 percent of all spaces. I guess it’s like a lottery, and if you’re super lucky, you’ll get one of those $10-a-day spaces.

But I know that in my riding, costs have skyrocketed. We do not see the same savings that are being spoken of. If we’re serious about gender equality and if we’re serious about our next generation, then we need to be serious about creating child care spaces. Yes, COVID has only exacerbated this issue and led to an even greater divide between the haves and the have-nots and has unduly affected women in the workforce.

[3:50 p.m.]

The number of constituents that I have currently that are struggling for spaces is inordinate. I have constituents that put themselves on 12 different wait-lists, at over $500 per wait-list, four years ago when their first child was born. They still sit on those 12 wait-lists today, as they are desperately trying to get one of those parents back to the workforce for their second child, not their first. This legislation is not going to reduce those wait-lists. This legislation does not create spaces.

Yes, right now I agree that there is a huge shortage of ECE workers in B.C. We support policies that can increase the number of these educators from training, certifying and hiring. True story. My mom has a master’s degree in special education and 40 years of teaching. She could not teach at an early childhood education centre because she is not licensed to do so.

We need to get serious about creating more spaces. What Bill 15 does is really just add a further burden to child care providers, which is already an industry that is so stretched. It’s an industry that typically is run by women. B.C. needs new built spaces, not just converted licensed spaces, which do not help to reduce the wait times that I just spoke of.

This government’s claim of having nearly 26,000 funded new licensed child care spaces actually is just a reclassification of existing spaces from being a registered daycare to a licensed daycare. This is not the same as creating new spaces. In comparison, the B.C. Liberal government created 39,959 spaces in 16 years. Just to do the math; that’s 3,300 per year. In the last two years of our government, we actually delivered over 11,000 new spaces. In the last election, we committed to deliver an actual $10-a-day plan, funded with a $1.1 billion investment in year 1.

I think we need to be really serious about what we’re doing here. I think we need to introduce bills that are actually going to address the issue, rather than just bureaucracy. Our families are under an incredible amount of stress. We have the next generation of millennials, who won’t even have kids until they start paying for an open space that they know they have to hold, just in case they get pregnant that year.

We heard about the amount of stress that this creates for children, not just parents. But parents are making a difficult choice as to who gets to work and who doesn’t, often, when they are not able to make ends meet. This bill just fails to realize how bad the issue actually is and how much farther we actually need to go.

We need legislation that facilitates the creation of child care spaces and provides clarity. This bill doesn’t.

J. Brar: I am really pleased to speak in support of Bill 15, Early Learning and Child Care Act, introduced in this House by our government in the spring session.

I have two children. They are grown up now, but when they were young, at that age, it was really a struggle to find affordable child care.

[3:55 p.m.]

In fact, I know many, many families who decide to send their children back home with their parents, grandparents, because they cannot afford child care in B.C. I know that. Families in B.C. have been experiencing child care chaos and a complete lack of services for too long — completely opposite than what the member who just spoke has been talking about — a long, long time.

This legislation is an important step in our ten-year Childcare B.C. plan to give families access to quality, affordable child care. This proposed act will reduce barriers to quality care, such as improving inclusive child care access and facilitating Indigenous-led child care programs. It will lay the foundation as we continue to build an inclusive universal child care system for families in the province of British Columbia.

We have made progress in the first 3½ years of our ten-year Childcare B.C. plan. This legislation is an important step forward, giving families access to quality, affordable, inclusive child care in the future. If passed, which I hope — in fact, I’m sure that it will pass — the Early Learning and Child Care Act will give the province the authority to create new regulations, including the ability to set limits on child care fees. That’s the key to helping ensure that child care is affordable for families. So that’s one important thing this legislation is going to do.

Secondly, it will provide increased transparency and accountability for government by requiring annual reports on the progress we have made towards building an inclusive universal child care system, along with the actions we have taken to support Indigenous-led child care throughout the province. That’s what this legislation is going to do.

The B.C. government is committed to make life better and more affordable for families, and that’s why affordability is a key pillar of our Childcare B.C. plan. That’s why we have already introduced several policies to help lower the cost of child care for families, including the affordable child care benefit, the child care fee reduction initiative and fee-cap policy, and $10-a-day universal child care prototype sites.

This act will also introduce regulation-making authority to establish limits on child care fees and fee increases for recipients of child care grants. This allows the ministry to cap child care fees through regulation. The key, at the end of the day, is to develop quality, inclusive and affordable child care.

The pandemic, as we all know, has shone a light on something we have known for a long time — that access to affordable child care is not simply good social policy; it is vital to B.C.’s economy. It is very important to continue our essential services when needed. Improving access to child care supports our economic recovery by creating more opportunities for parents, particularly mothers, to go back to work or school and give kids the best possible start.

[4:00 p.m.]

This legislation will help ensure that the early childhood educator profession continues to grow and that access to affordable, quality and inclusive child care remains a commitment for generations to come.

It’s important to look at the history of this legislation. The member who just spoke before me…. I just want to highlight the history of this legislation.

This act introduces aspects of the BC Benefits (Child Care) Act, which was introduced back in 1996, as well as the Child Care B.C. Act from 2001, which signalled the government of the day’s commitment to build affordable, quality and accessible child care for families. It is very important to note that the sections of the act that made affordability programs possible were repealed later in 2001, following a provincial election and a change in government. The people of British Columbia will never forget that.

There is still more work to do, but when passed, this statute will be an important part of an early learning and child care system that will evolve to meet the needs of B.C. families for generations to come. This is good legislation, and this will certainly make child care in B.C. more inclusive and more affordable. Therefore, I will be proud to support this legislation.

A. Mercier: It’s an honour today to rise to talk about the Early Learning and Child Care Act.

Before I get into the act, I just want to respond to a comment from the member for Kelowna-Mission that I found to be a little rich. It was that the B.C. Liberal caucus and the B.C. Liberal Party are for supporting whatever they can do to help early childhood educators — predominantly, historically low-wage women workers. I think that’s a little rich coming from a former government and political party that introduced a $6-an-hour training wage and came into government laying off more women in a single day than any government in the history of this country.

This act is a great step forward for gender equality, for workforce development and for our society as a whole. I want to take a moment to commend the Minister of State for Child Care for the work that she’s done on this file. This is going to be transformational — not just for folks in British Columbia, especially for folks in British Columbia.

I can also speak from my own personal experience on the impact that child care has had on my life. I’ve got a three-year-old daughter who has been going to child care now in Langley for the past two years. To watch the impacts that this has both on her socialization and how she interacts with other kids, with adults and those around her, but to also see the cognitive leaps and bounds she goes through….

It may be a shock, hearing me speak today, to know that my three-year-old is actually very bright. She’s not getting it from her father. She’s getting it from going into daycare, to child care, every day. She’s learning the alphabet. She’s learning math. At three, she can read basic stories. It’s just incredible to see the impact that that institution has.

What’s core, and why it’s so important, is that it’s affordable so families like mine can access it. I can say for a certainty that I would not be here today in the Legislature, and my wife wouldn’t be able to work in politics as she does, if we didn’t have access to that kind of child care.

I was just speaking to my wife briefly before coming in here to make sure I can say this. We’ve also got one on the way in March. [Applause.]

Thank you.

The work that we’re doing as a government to ensure access to child care puts my mind at ease. When I see the investments that we are making in new child care spaces in Langley, which are part of the plan that this act supports, and the subsidies to child care costs…. It puts my mind at ease knowing that there will be space for my next child when the time comes. That’s incredibly important.

[4:05 p.m.]

I just want to say one other word, just personally, about watching my daughter over the past 18 months in child care. Raising a family now, during the pandemic, has been incredibly difficult for so many people, but it’s been an incredibly difficult time for children. They miss out on simple things like birthdays or going over to their friends’ houses. At that age, two or three years old, that’s really critical for their socialization and cognitive development.

The role that child care and that the early childhood educators in the child care centre have provided, making sure that kids have birthdays, that they do small birthday parties and that they step into that social void, has been absolutely incredible. I cannot say enough good things about that child care centre and the folks that work there.

Langley is growing. My community of Langley is growing at a phenomenal rate. As Langley city council finalizes the new official community plan around SkyTrain, we’re going to see more multifamily, more density. That’s going to bring more of a demand for child care, which is why we need to make sure that we’re building this infrastructure out and that we’re building out the caring economy and our caring infrastructure along with our, kind of, hard infrastructure.

That’s incredibly important, which is why I’m proud to say that we’ve spent over $25 million as a government since 2017 on child care in my community of Langley. That’s $12 million since 2017, reducing fees, things that this act is going to enable, that the Early Learning and Child Care Act will enable.

We’ve created new spaces. It’s just been a boon for families. We’ve approved over 350 new spaces in Langley and have over 170 early childhood educators, constituents of mine, receiving the wage enhancement. This legislation is going to help my constituents in Langley access affordable child care across the spectrum.

A key part of this bill is that it establishes new regulation-making powers to set limits on fees which, when it’s enacted, will help keep child care fees more affordable for families. That is so critical. You shouldn’t have to work a full-time job just to afford child care. It is a fundamental question and issue of inclusivity and of social equality. It’s something that needs to be forefront of mind, and I am so heartened that it is.

This act combines the Child Care B.C. Act and the Child Care Subsidy Act into a single piece of legislation to signal government’s commitment to inclusive, universal child care and to Indigenous-led child care that will best meet the needs of families and communities, like mine in Langley, throughout this province. This supports the use of child care grants like the minister spoke about to improve the inclusiveness of child care and to make sure that we’re promoting Indigenous-led child care.

This is such an incredible and necessary first step to addressing what has been, basically, 16 years of chaos on the child care file, going back to 2001. The reality of it is that raising children and having a young family can be chaotic enough. Arranging their care shouldn’t be chaotic as well.

Coming off this past summer and the consultations I’ve done in my role as Parliamentary Secretary for Skills Training on skilled trades certification, I can tell you that I have not talked to a single tradeswoman that hasn’t brought up the need for accessible child care. When we look at women’s participation in the construction workforce, it’s remarkably lower than across the rest of the economy. We’re facing a serious skills gap in the skilled trades. We’re going to have about 73,000 job openings in the next eight years, 55,800 of which are going to be caused by retirements in the construction industry.

Those jobs are not going to be filled by men. We need to make sure that we’re helping women with the tools that they need to be successful and to enter the labour market. Making sure that we have affordable child care that is inclusive is a key and critical part of that.

[4:10 p.m.]

I can say that I’m proud to stand up and speak in favour of this bill. I’m sure it is going to receive cross-party support. As we’ve heard from members from all sides, child care is probably the critical issue facing most constituents.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further….

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: North Vancouver–Seymour, would you like to address the bill?

S. Chant: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d love to have that opportunity. Allow me one minute.

Deputy Speaker: You can have 30.

S. Chant: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that.

I ask the members of the House to think about a patchwork blanket. When we think about a patchwork blanket, everybody has seen one. Everybody has probably had one in a trunk somewhere or pulled it out or has it down on the couch in the TV room. It’s usually large. It’s usually warm. It’s usually composed of a mishmash of materials all kind of sewn together and fit together however they could be at the time it was made. Bits and bobs here. Additions there. Rips there.

It’s somewhat functional. You can usually cover most of yourself with it, but a bit always sticks out. It works well for some people. Other people it doesn’t work so well for. And it easily falls apart on occasion. When you think about this patchwork blanket, that’s what our child care system looked like prior to 2017.

On an individual basis, most child care providers give a warm and caring environment for the children that are able to get into their program. Often these programs are stretched to the max to accommodate as many children as possible, and this is in spite of factors such as a shortage of qualified care providers, cost of physical venues, regulations that determine ratios of care and amount of space needed by each child in each age group, not to mention the constant increase in the overall operational costs. A lot of the barriers can be attributed to a poor or nonexistent focus on this critical service prior to 2017.

Another challenge that is faced by child care providers is in meeting actual individual needs of children and their families. Families face the ongoing conflict of determining how to afford child care that provides a safe, stimulating and caring environment while the parents work to pay for all of the necessities of day-to-day living, a large component of which is child care.

Perhaps no one in this chamber can imagine having to make work, career or profession choices based on whether or not you can get your child into a safe program that is available while you work. I’m betting a few people in this chamber have made those choices and made those decisions and been in those positions.

Families are faced with these decisions every day in our province as they determine whether their kids can get care that is timely and appropriate. Why do I say timely? Well, how many young mothers and fathers want to come back to work after MATA/PATA leave but cannot find overnight care if they are a shift worker? How many can’t find care at all? How many have been on lists and waiting? How many have had their places close? How many have had, as my previous colleague referred to, another child? Oh my goodness, how could that happen?

How many couples have opposing work schedules to ensure that one of them can cover the child care on a day-to-day basis? Meaning if there is a problem at work or a problem at home, both the child and the parents, the entire family and often the grandmama or the sister or the neighbour — their days are also affected.

[4:15 p.m.]

Additionally, this has a serious impact on relationships within families as a whole as well as dampening the capacity for extended families to grow those critical bonds that are established through gatherings and events. People paying for child care may not have the financial bandwidth to travel to other parts of Canada, let alone other parts of the country and world, to visit relatives. Nor may they have the available vacation time to make that a worthwhile trip.

This bill allows for the establishment of a child care system that is inclusive, universal and accessible to all those who will benefit. When we talk about inclusive, there are so many factors to be considered, so many that I can’t even rhyme them off. However, some I can mention.

Location. I have many constituents in my riding who talk to me about being in traffic for much longer than they would have otherwise. They may be working from home now. However, their child is in care on the other side of a bridge — oh my goodness — the other side of the municipality, the other side of the city.

They have issues around costs. This daycare that is right close to them is very expensive, even if they could get in. And guess what? You have to pay to get on a wait-list. But the one that is further away is more manageable within their budget.

The environment that it offers. I look at a daycare centre that’s in our local university. It’s a beautiful, large area with trees and play houses and lots of things for kids to do outside, from absolute minimal toddlers in their Muddy Buddy suits out there playing in puddles to the older kids that are monkeying around on trees and playing around. And then they’ve got a lovely indoor environment that has got all the things that you could possibly need.

They’ve also got lots of staff because they’ve got early childhood education students that are doing their practicum there. So there is lots of staff. There is lots of space, but there are not a lot of spaces for children. They have a limit on how many spaces, and they are full all the time. They have long wait-lists. Those environments aren’t available at every daycare place. Every daycare place has different options.

The staffing. Oh my goodness. We talk about staffing with everything. We’ve got small places that are closed because they can’t get staff. Well, try to get staff that is qualified to do the care of those that are amongst our most valuable resource — our children — that are able and have the skill set. Those things need to be sorted out.

My colleague spoke about people that are teachers for many, many years. We need to figure out how we can continue to use that skill set, and we are. We’re working those things through.

I’ve spoken to folks who are riding in traffic — in cars, on buses, on bicycles — much more than they would be otherwise, again, because their kids are in a program that is far from home. This detracts from time at home.

Bundling kid up. Bundling me up. Getting everything in the backpack. Getting out in the vehicle or the bus or the bicycle. Getting to wherever we’re supposed to be. Unbundling. Dropping off. Going through the, sometimes, trauma of dropping off because this wasn’t the day the kid wanted to be dropped off or because I, as a parent, am having a really hard time leaving my child with somebody else.

There are kids who get to care, and then they have a packed or provided breakfast, because it’s up, under the arm, let’s go. We’ve got to go. You can eat when you get there. It’ll be all right.

These are the families that are able to get some type of care provision in order to maintain some level of income through the adults being able to work. We have many other families who haven’t been able to access that. We have many other families, generations of families, who are doing things they hadn’t expected to do because they are now needing to do child care as well.

Grandmas aren’t always wanting to do child care as their first and foremost function. I am almost of grandma age, and I can tell you that child care doesn’t factor into what I do right now. However, if I’m needed, I will kick in. But I should not be the first line of defence or the first line of care.

[4:20 p.m.]

We need to ensure universality of access so that when child care is needed, it can be found and started in a place and time that is supportive of the families that are using it.

I had a next door neighbour — a nurse practitioner, by the way. Her husband was an engineer. When they were both able to work, they made good money. They had one child, and they were doing all right. When the second child came along, within six months, they moved back to Alberta to be with family, because they could not manage the child care for that second child. It wasn’t working. They couldn’t make it work. They could not do their jobs, jobs which supported the fabric of our community, and also manage child care.

Accountability is a critical thing in having a system that’s entrusted with our kids — as I said before, our most valued and one of our most vulnerable populations and resources. This act will allow the government to create regulations that will apply to all child care providers, ensuring accountability, affordability and accessibility.

As has been the approach throughout the Minister of Children and Family Development’s tenure, the Indigenous lens is a critical piece of the planning and implementation of child care programs that will be well-attuned to the needs of our Indigenous population. Engagement and consultation has been an ongoing part of the making of this bill and will continue to be so throughout its implementation. Plans are being made for ensuring the sustainability of a child care system that strives to meet the very needs of family in our province, fully involving all populations.

Our patchwork blanket is set to evolve into a quilt, with each piece carefully considered and placed and with an eye to the overall strength, presentation and quality of the product. The Early Learning and Child Care Act gives the framework for a program that is universal, affordable and accessible for those who depend on child care as a support for not only the children, but their families and our communities as well.

I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to speak.

J. Sims: It’s my pleasure today to rise and speak in support of the second reading for Bill 15, the Early Learning and Child Care Act. If you’ve heard me speak on child care before, you know how passionately I feel about this. Being a teacher, a mother, a grandmother and now a great-grandmother, I know how critical quality child care is for us as a society.

I think often when we look at child care, we just look at it as good for kids. I want to put forward an argument that good quality inclusive child care is good for the economy. It’s good for the economy. There is research and data to support that for every dollar you put into child care, you get $4 to $5 back, without looking at secondary and third level economic benefits. What we also know is that when we invest in child care and early education, what we get are savings in education and savings in health care. That is also excellent.

What we also heard is that with our labour shortage, which I hear about all the time in my constituency office from almost right across the spectrum…. When we have safe, quality, inclusive child care, what it also does is it allows those who are staying at home because they don’t have child care to go back into the workforce.

Also, when we build new child care centres, that creates good-paying jobs. When we hire early childhood educators, that creates good-paying jobs.

[4:25 p.m.]

Today I have been delighted that colleagues on both sides of the aisle have a commitment to quality child care. Some have come here a bit reluctantly, but I’m really happy to see that, because once again, investment in our children and investment in child care is the best investment any legislature can make. Because of that, it’s a great pleasure for me to stand here and speak.

At a time when I was a Member of Parliament — which seems like eons ago but was probably only like yesterday — I remember the plan that was put forward at that time, which was for a $15-a-day child care. We believed that was doable at that time right across the country. Now, today, I am so happy that we have $10-a-day child care not only in B.C., but at least seven provinces have now signed on to have that program right across the country, with more coming on board.

With a federal government that has made a very significant commitment to child care, I’m really looking forward to child care improving across Canada and, with the additional funds, us being able to accelerate even faster to have more child care spaces. It’s all good news whenever you look at it, from whichever direction. We do know that child care is good for our kids as well as for economic benefit.

I remember the struggles I had, because when I came to Canada, my first child was born in Quebec. It was almost like a dream that Quebec actually had a child care program. Unfortunately, it wasn’t near where I lived, but I was still so happy that they had that. So I don’t want to say that we’ve taken the lead on this, but I do want to acknowledge the awesome program that exists in Quebec and that has been a role model for the rest of us across this country.

We do know of European countries that have excellent child care programs that are well funded and staffed with qualified early childhood educators. Through those experiences, we have learned that the benefits are huge. Economically, socially, educationally, emotionally — you believe it.

One of the things I want to say is to just think of the worker who goes to work, a working mom. If she knows her child is in a good daycare centre with a qualified early child care provider, she knows that her child is safe. Her productivity at work is going to include…. Those are so many ways we can look at the economic advantages.

I can tell you that in my particular riding of Surrey-Panorama, I hear from lots of parents. I used to hear from lots of parents complaining about the lack of child care when I was a Member of Parliament and then when I got elected in 2017. They could not wait for us to get those additional spaces built. I very much understand the concerns raised by some of my colleagues across the aisle when they said we need more. I absolutely agree. But when you’re going from a huge deficit, it takes time to build.

Just as in Surrey, when we became government, there were close to 7,500 students sitting in portables because the infrastructure had not been maintained. I’m so delighted that over 9,000 spaces have been created since we have formed government. It’s all about kids and about education and moving forward.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

In a similar way, I remember talking to young professional mom who was very, very concerned that with a baby, she could not get child care for under $1,800 a month.

[4:30 p.m.]

She sat down and did her budget. She was a lawyer in the early stages of her career and really looked at if it was that much for one child, how much would it be for her second and whether she could really go back to the profession she loved.

Similarly, a young woman — and I’m going to make up this name, because I don’t want to identify her — called Wendy. She came in, a single mom. She wanted to go to work. She wanted to finish her education. But the cost of child care was getting in the way.

Since I have been a member of this Legislature, I have seen lots of activity by this government that has benefited British Columbians. But I can tell you that the stories I hear from parents when it comes to child care bring tears to your eyes. They are heartfelt, and they are very grateful for the work we have done.

As you all know, when I speak, I very rarely throw in numbers. Today I’m going to do that. I was looking at the data that I had. Since we have become government, our government has spent, in Surrey, $269-plus million on child care. I want my colleagues from the Surrey area here on both sides to pay a little bit of attention here. That’s $269-plus million that have been spent in the city of Surrey on child care.

Out of those, $177½ million was spent on creating spaces, and $91½ million was spent in money that was returned back to parents in the way of savings. Just think about that, Mr. Speaker. I know that you’re a dad, and you appreciate the difficulties that young families, single and not single, experience with this.

In Surrey, the average monthly ACCB amount for families, as of March 2021, was $624. That is $624 that’s not going into the Canary Islands. It’s not going into any of those accounts overseas. That is money that is going to be spent in the community on clothes, on food, on books, on providing our kids with extracurriculars and with other supports they need. That is what I call action by a government that has been concerted. Now, if I were to start talking about the whole province, it would take me a lot longer. But I just wanted to give you a view of what has happened in Surrey.

Let me now try to break it down and deconstruct a little bit further. I see that some of my colleagues from Surrey are here. I want to read what has happened in their riding — for example, Surrey–White Rock. The amount that has gone back to parents in Surrey–White Rock is $4.4 million. That is $621 a family. And $12½ million has been spent in Surrey–White Rock on new child care spaces for kids in British Columbia.

When I look at…. My colleague is here from Surrey–​Green Timbers. Once again, parents in her riding got back $687, and they gained $9 million back in their pockets in that particular riding. For her, $16.5 million spent on creating new child care spaces.

So we’re not just talking about large numbers there. This is very specific, concrete assistance that has been provided to families in Surrey.

[4:35 p.m.]

I would invite every one of you sitting in this room to go and get the data. Do the analysis for your own riding. You will be thrilled to see, no matter which side of the House you sit on, the benefits that parents have gained as a result of the commitment of the Premier and this government. And at this point, I do want to acknowledge and salute the work done by the previous minister and the current two ministers on this file — big file, had to start from somewhere. But they have moved us forward.

People are going to say: “She’s talked about Surrey–​White Rock.” I’ve talked about Surrey–Green Timbers. You know what? I have to share what parents in my riding have gained out of this since we have become government. This was 2018-19 to 2021, to March. Surrey-Panorama — $10.3 million. That’s $667 per family. Once again, let us have that sink in; $10.3 million went back into the economy in Surrey. In Surrey-Panorama, parents went and bought books, may have ended up buying furniture, might even have been able to afford to buy a house now because they had some savings here. That’s the money that is circulating and boosts our economy.

Now, this is not the kind of money, as I said earlier, that goes off to the Canary Islands or to sit in a secret bank account somewhere to avoid taxation. When we invest like this and parents and working people benefit, and our small businesses benefit, that money gets spent right back in the community, and that leads to further economic growth — good for kids, good for the economy.

Now let’s take a look to see how much money was spent on building child care spaces in Surrey-Panorama, $19.875 million. I’ll round down: $19.8 million. That is quite something. Actually, I went through this data last March, when it came out, and I did a chart for myself for Surrey and for my own riding. Every now and then, when I hear from either across the aisle or somewhere, “What has this government done?” I have a huge pile of things that this government has done.

But I’m very proud of the mother, grandmother and great-grandmother — that we made this a priority, that we have carried on doing work on this file, and that the current two ministers are totally driven to grow more child care spaces because we know that’s good for kids. And when things are good for kids, it’s good for all of us.

When you look at what has happened, COVID, the pandemic, has shone the light on the inequalities that exist in our system. We have seen — and many of us talked about it — the gap between the rich and poor getting wider. What we have also seen during COVID is that we have an opportunity here. We have an opportunity to invest in our systems, invest in the people in British Columbia, but also to look at our infrastructure, look at the services we offer and say: “How can we have a more equitable society?” I would say that is absolutely essential.

[4:40 p.m.]

Whenever I look at many of the, I would say, warts in our society, and I’m going to mention a few of them, many of those are there, and they are made worse when we have inequalities and injustice. When people are not feeling secure in themselves, in their income, in their lifestyle, then it’s very easy to start pointing fingers and attacking others. In order to have a more just and inclusive society, we’ve got to start taking a look at some of the foundation and saying: “What is it that’s rotten in the foundation, and how do we fix it?”

I’m sure all of you, as you studied geography in your high school, must have taken a look at the poverty cycle. Poverty will keep repeating itself, the cycle will continue, unless there is a concerted effort made to break that cycle.

One of the levers we have to break that poverty cycle is investment in child care. It’s not the only lever, but it is one of the key levers, as I said earlier, because our kids then get an early start with professionally trained early child care educators. We also get parents, who may not have been able to go out to work, to be able to go out to work and earn an income. Plus, we will have so many able to go back and re-skill themselves or to take on a new skill set so that they can be productive and take part in the new economy. That’s what our restart gives us an opportunity to do. It all starts with investing in those early years, investing in early child care education.

I’m going to give you an example that’s very close and dear to my heart. If you’ve been following my social media you will notice that, like many of you, strange things happened during COVID. My great-granddaughter, because I didn’t see her for almost two years, went from being a baby to being a little girl. She has one of these child care spaces, and that allowed her mom to go to work and finish her post-secondary education. When I watch how happy she has been to go to her daycare and the kind of experiences she has there, and the confidence she has, I am in awe.

Now she’s growing up a little bit too fast for me, but we’ve all been there. I can’t wait for her to come and visit us again here. But that made a huge difference in her life and in the life of my granddaughter and made it easier for us — all of us.

I’m not a grandmother who’s a sit-at-home mom and was going to be babysitting. As my colleague said earlier, extended family is not always there to be able to take care of the children. Now those people who are fortunate to have that, that’s great. But I’m finding young couples who come to see me now, even when they have extended family, still want their children to experience what a good child care centre has to offer.

By the way, our four-year-old, Alliya, has no difficulty in wearing a mask all day. As a matter of fact, she thinks that’s quite normal, because that was part of going to school. Even when we go for a walk, if she sees someone walking towards you — she calls me “mama” — it’s “Mama, put on your mask.” I’m saying: “We’re outside.” Wear it anyway, right? That’s just the way that it is.

As I was sort of saying, child care is absolutely critical. It’s good for economics, it’s good for our kids, it’s good for families, and it’s good for our communities as well. This particular legislation will create new regulations that will help us to limit child care fees because we don’t want to have child care that is unaffordable.

[4:45 p.m.]

Under the previous administration, the limited number of child care spaces that were there were not affordable by a single mom or by working young professionals. They were just out of their price range.

Accountability is always good. Having spent most of my time with kids, I think when we send our kids to child care or we send them to public schools — or schools, period — we entrust our most valued beings to either the child care or the school system. So absolutely, we want to have transparency, and we want to have accountability.

Talking about accountability, I think the ministers in charge of this file have so much to celebrate for the work they have done. The data I gave you earlier, as I said, is only data for Surrey. So please, as I said earlier, make sure that you get the data for your riding.

Right now I want to share the story of a young couple who came to my office recently, very impressed with our child care policies. The wife is a nurse, but she’s starting her own family. She would like to open up a child care centre. That’s what she wants to do. But you know what? If there are people out there who would like to open up child care centres, we have support systems in place. I encourage you to go onto the website. There is support there, because we are very committed.

We’re partnering with cities. Here I’m going to appeal to the city of Surrey. Let’s get more spaces, and let’s work together so that every corner of Surrey, whether you live in Whalley, whether you live in Newton, whether you live in Panorama or whether you live in Cloverdale, whichever part that you live in, parents have child care that is close to their home.

It absolutely spoke to me when a previous colleague said that parents spend hours in a car going to drop off their child and then pick them up again at the end of the day. Look, we want child care that is convenient. Most importantly, we want child care that is inclusive, that is accessible.

What I would say is, as we train the next generation of early child care educators, let us remember we have an opportunity here. We have an opportunity here to attract and recruit future early child care educators who reflect the diversity of our population, so that when our kids, no matter which section of the community they’re from, go into the child care centres, they will see themselves reflected.

That needs to happen in every level of government, in all our institutions, in all our systems — in the private sector, in the public sector. We as a government can play a critical role in that area to make sure that our systems and those who work in our systems reflect the diversity of our population. Every child needs to be able to see themselves reflected somewhere in there.

I also want to say…. I see I’m running out of time. I don’t know how that could have happened. I haven’t even gotten to the bulk of my speech yet.

I was just….

Interjections.

J. Sims: Thank you. Here we are.

We heard some very moving speeches today about truth and reconciliation. Very moving. The 30th of September was a moving day across our country. For me, it was a time to sit and read, to reflect, to talk with my own family about the importance of truth and reconciliation and to do a self-assessment of actions I have taken, could have taken and need to take, and what we need to work on.

[4:50 p.m.]

But when it comes to child care, again, it’s very, very important that we invest in child care that is culturally sensitive and driven by the First Nations community for the First Nations community. That financial investment needs to be made, because every child matters. It cannot just be a slogan.

Governments — I’m part of one. And even before, my union, the B.C. Teachers Federation…. It’s easy to come up with slogans at times, but turning those slogans into action, making those slogans real for the people that we are talking about, is what our job is, as legislators.

So as legislators today, I ask each and every one of us to renew our commitment to investments in child care, to make sure that those investments are made right across the province, that our investments accommodate our diversity and the richness of our diversity, both cultural and ethnic, and those investments honour our First Nations’ heritage and make sure that we are providing or working on developing First Nations child care with our First Nations communities, not doing it to them but travelling this road together.

I will finish off by saying it’s good for our kids. It’s good for our economy. It’s good for growing good-paying jobs. So, folks, why wouldn’t we invest in child care? Why wouldn’t we make that one of our top priorities? Every child matters, and every child is worth the investment. Let’s get it done.

H. Yao: Thank you for the opportunity to express my support for the Early Learning and Child Care Act.

I’m not as articulate as the previous speakers. I just want to share a bit about a personal experience. Being a young father, I have the opportunity — I hate to say, thanks to COVID — to spend extra time with my baby girl and my wife while we’re all caring for my daughter together.

One thing that I do want to say is that I have never understood the complexity or the intensity of child care until I watched my wife looking after my baby girl. I often remember at seven o’clock in the morning, my girl is kicking, yelling and screaming and wanting someone’s attention. I get up groggy, use my hands to feel my way through until I get to her crib, pick her up like a football and walk downstairs.

Sometimes, every step that I take, I just pray to God: “Please don’t let me trip. Please don’t let me trip. Please don’t let me trip.” I walk all the way down to the second floor so I can play with her while my wife has a little extra sleep. Why? Because my wife has woken up three to four times throughout the night to look after her. I cannot compare my effort to hers when she’s putting her heart and soul into looking after a child.

And I know that many people talk about extended family. Earlier on, I had my in-laws supporting my family and also had my parents supporting my family, while we were looking after a young one. But there are a few things that must be understood. Extended family, especially seniors like in-laws and grandparents, often have a certain amount of age limitations. They could be exhausted. They could be tired. They could be looking after multiple grandkids, and you’re grandkid is one of them. They are trying to squeeze in a little bit of time to look after the child.

And I think many, many young mothers, especially young parents, are probably also aware families like to give advice. I think sometimes we would like to say that parents know the best interests of a child, but a lot of people like to tell you that they know better than you do.

I will tell you right now: I don’t mind taking that advice. I don’t spend as much time with my child as my wife does. But every time you have a grandparent looking after the baby girl, telling you everything that you have been doing to this point is wrong…. I can see the stress on my wife’s face. She’s not happy about it. But we know that she will try to be cooperative.

I still remember watching my wife carrying her baby girl, crying, yet often seeing her zoning out. I asked her: “Is the child too difficult?” I think we all share that parental guilt that we are supposed to be committed to our child care and play with our child.

[4:55 p.m.]

My wife often tells me she misses her career. She misses the fact that she can’t look at her social media account, where her friend is getting a promotion. Somebody is telling of sales success. Another friend of hers is telling of another friend who is actually getting recognition for an achievement. She sits there, and she’s wondering when she will have adult contact, when she can hang out with her friends, hang out with her coworkers, hang out with colleagues.

As a male partner, as a husband and as a partner to my wife, I wish I was Superman and I could come in and fix a problem. I can’t. Not just I can’t. The fact that I’m serving as an MLA often takes me away from the ability to continue to provide support for my wife. I’m privileged to be able to be here. I’m thankful to Richmond South Centre constituents for voting me in, allowing me to represent them and to also serve them and serve British Columbia. At the same time, I also realize that this responsibility comes with time obligation — my commitment to British Columbians.

When I look at my wife, she’s only been…. I shouldn’t say “she only.” She took maternity leave from January till now. She’s been there for nine months. I promise you that my wife is a dedicated mother. I don’t think anybody can comment or contradict that most mothers — most parents here, I think, and across the aisle — are all committed to our children’s well-being, fairness and care. We want them to grow up healthy, strong and successful. But I think, to be realistic, we also need to realize….

My wife also has a passion for her career. She has a passion for her own self-growth as well. Right now, we’re all looking at the February sitting. My wife and I are talking about child care options. That reminded me so much that I am privileged. I have friends. I even know some colleagues in this House are single parents. So often, you can have a perfect plan for work. But as soon as your child care didn’t follow through, or something goes wrong, you have to drop everything off and try to fix the child care problem first, because that’s the only thing that matters at that moment. But it’s not an easy problem to solve, either.

Your brothers and sisters might be too busy to pick up your kid. Your cousins might not be available. Your parents might be looking after other grandkids. You have to juggle continuously between work and child care.

I’ll be honest that, as a man, I’m privileged. I am privileged that I never got stuck in that situation. It’s completely unfair — completely unfair — that my wife endures that. I think of many, many females, or many mothers, who sacrifice career or take time off to care for a child. Thank you for your sacrifice for your family. Thank you for the sacrifice for your kids. We know you deserve more, and you deserve better. That is why I’m so excited to be here, sending support for the Early Learning and Child Care Act. It’s because it’s time for us to incorporate fairness, equity and equality and to allow everybody to have a right to pursue the career of their choice.

Having a child shouldn’t be a sentence. I think that’s the best way for me to view it. I feel like once you have a child, some parents have to commit to it and hold on to what they’re committed to. There’s much, much more to do. I’m so thankful that we have good ministers who are continuously looking for creative, strong strategies to ensure that we have universal child care that’s affordable, accessible, equitable, quality and able to provide much-needed support so mothers, fathers and all different kinds of parents can find their way to return to the workforce and pursue their passion, contribute to the economy.

This is a passionate topic for me, because I have seen that emptiness in my wife’s eyes when she’s looking at someone else’s success. I cannot tell you how much it hurts me. I cannot tell you how much I’m excited that our government continues to put a strong, progressive movement forward to ensure that we are here to provide different parents a right to have a future, a right to pursue their own happiness. To me, this Early Learning and Child Care Act is one of the remaining stepping stones for us to step towards universal child care.

The fact that I had to drive all the way here from Richmond to Victoria to participate in this lovely legislation…. I want to say that I enjoy being here with my 86 colleagues, sitting in this room.

[5:00 p.m.]

I tell everybody, and I’m pretty sure everybody echoes my sentiment too, that within ten minutes of driving out from my house, I already miss my baby girl. I miss her chubby cheeks. I miss her smell. I miss the fact that she pulls my wife’s hair, and my wife’s begging me for help.

That’s what family is about. We all love our kids. We all want the best for them. But I think that doesn’t mean that parents cannot have a right to pursue their own happiness as well. We do screen time, we do shares, and we really are looking for ways to stay connected, but I also remember one thing in my mind that was being taught at airport security.

When you are flying in an airplane, when the air mask drops, you put yours on first before you help someone else. I will take that same analogy back to families. If we cannot look after the parent who spends most of their energy taking care of a child so the parent can pursue their own happiness and career and life of their choice, how can we assume the parent can have adequate energy, passion and sufficiency to look after a child as a family?

I’m pretty sure everybody around here — all of my hon. colleagues in the chamber — agrees with me. We’re here to do what is best for British Columbians, whether it’s for a child, whether it’s for a parent, or whether it’s for our economy. This universal child care is many, many steps away, and we have much more work to do, but we need to take one concrete step after another to ensure parents will have the opportunity to pursue a career of their choice.

I still want to also make a comment about my father, who is a very dedicated father to our families. Compared to my sister, she actually had three kids before I did, so my father loved spending time with the three grandkids, from teaching them how to eat to teaching them Mandarin, and sometimes learning how to change diapers. We are still talking about that. Whenever a child goes through the diaper with the solids…. It’s sharing goals with everyone else.

When my baby girl was born and I had a few months of getting involved…. My father is tired. He doesn’t have the energy to continue. He always asks: “What can I do to squeeze time here and there to make it work?” But he starts telling me: “Can we stay in the daytime, please, because I don’t have the time, maybe, in the afternoon. Can we maybe avoid this morning, because I had a really bad night’s sleep.” Sometimes they just cannot keep up. I don’t think it’s fair to assume everyone has extended families. We know there are colleagues who are single parents and don’t have extended family to be able to provide as well.

I just really want go back to the passion I want to talk about again. As a husband, I want to see my wife be happy. As a father, I want to see my child be excited. I want her to grow up and be a passionate, exciting little individual. I want her to have the best opportunities, but I think, fundamentally, we have to go back to square one. Having a child should never be a life sentence. It’s a blessing. It’s an opportunity. It’s a great opportunity for to us extend our families.

But at the same time, our government’s doing such great work, and we’ll continue moving forward to ensure every British Columbian and to bring every British Columbian to discover their potential, to be able to explore their competence and to find a way to be a contributing member to our societies. I’m so excited to be able to stand up here today in front of our speakers to show my support for the Early Learning and Child Care Act. Thank you, everyone.

R. Leonard: I rise to speak in support of Bill 15, the Early Learning and Child Care Act. I know there’s a pair of bills coming forward, and it makes it a little bit difficult to try and keep the two separated, because you can’t have one without the other. I think there’s a song about that.

I wanted to acknowledge the work of the Minister of State for Child Care and the support of the Minister of Child and Family Development. She has worked under two different ministers and has put forward some incredible initiatives that are changing the face of British Columbia.

[5:05 p.m.]

We talked today about truth and reconciliation, and this Early Learning and Child Care Act speaks to creating more inclusive child care, more accessible child care. This is one of those steps that puts into action the need for us to move forward and recognize what has happened in the past has created an imbalance.

It’s also true that we’ve had a lot of challenges around COVID-19, and they have shone a light on a lot of different inequities that are in our beautiful province and that we need to do things to change that inequity, to bring some balance back into the workplace and into the fabric of our society. So it’s very exciting that we now have these pieces of legislation that are continuing us down that path to achieve that equity, to achieve a child care system that makes sense to parents, that serves their needs.

There are so many people, when I was on the Committee on Children and Youth, that we heard from who were in need of supports so that they could continue on with their lives. There’s a lot of constraints that happen with children who have some of the learning challenges that really put families at a place where they have difficulty coping, let alone getting off to work. So the notion of bringing together the notion of child care with early learning is part of that path to make a difference in the lives of families in British Columbia.

I just wanted to take a second to say that people want solutions right away, and the fact of the matter is that to build lasting change takes time. What we have is a ten-year plan. We are now into year 3 of that plan and working to solidify it so that it can’t be just torn apart as was done in 2001. We were on track to creating affordable, accessible, quality child care in the ’90s, and a change of government meant all of that went out the window.

It’s not an easy job to put together a system of child care. When you talk to any parent, their child is the most special one in the world, and they have different needs than everybody else. It’s one of the reasons I never wanted to be a school trustee. Every child seems to be the most brilliant one in the classroom, and they deserve special attention.

Well, every child does deserve special attention, and this bill is going to help to make that happen for families — families that need to go to work, that want to go to work, where careers are built, where we have community-building. All of that comes only if we have a good child care system. We do have that on a big roll right now.

In fact, when you think about what you are going to walk away with as an MLA…. What are the big projects? What are the ones that you will be proud to have been a part of? I know that when the child care policies that we introduced were first introduced, I had tears in my eyes, because it was unbelievable that we were going to be able to make such huge changes in people’s lives.

This legislation is going to reduce barriers to quality care. It’s going to improve inclusive child care access, and it’s going to facilitate Indigenous-led child care. It will give us an opportunity to set the stage so that the child care fees can have limits set on them, and it’s going to ensure that child care is affordable for families.

[5:10 p.m.]

The other thing that it’s going to do is increase transparency and accountability for government with annual reports to make sure that we’re moving towards that goal that we have committed to. It isn’t just a bureaucratic piece of work that we’re talking about here. We are talking about how to create a really solid child care system that does stand the test of time.

I think the piece that seemed to be causing a little bit of distress was the fact that it was going to be through regulation that some of this stuff is going to happen. The fact of the matter is that you can’t have that collaboration, you can’t build those relationships, and you can’t build a system that has the input of the early childhood educators and doesn’t have the input of the families and doesn’t have the input of the Indigenous organizations who are going to be providing this service.

You need to have that flexibility so that you can respond to the circumstances and respond to the players that are involved in building this system of child care that brings security to families, knowing that they can take their children to whichever facility it is and know that they are going to receive the best care possible.

I just wanted to take a moment, too, to talk about the consultation with First Nations. The notion is that it’s not going to be just a one-time deal. This is a continuing effort. The ministry is committed to working closely with First Nations leaders and rights holders, the Métis Nation and Indigenous partners to continue planning for long-term, systemic improvements to the access and delivery of culturally safe and distinction-based child care in B.C.

I remember going to our Wachiay Friendship Centre when they opened up their Head Start program. It was just amazing, the joy in the families that were there to celebrate, knowing that there were going to be such differences in their lives and that their kids were going to be experiencing such a quality early learning experience.

One of the other questions that comes up is around the federal government and their involvement in coming to the table with some pretty impressive investments, finally. Those commitments are aligned with the proposed changes that come with this bill, and I think that’s important, that we recognize that there are a lot of different players out there that we need to be working with. It is an exciting time to see these kinds of changes as we come out of a pandemic that’s paralyzed economies, that’s paralyzed families, and to know that we’re going to be continuing to grow that child care system that is going to see us into many generations to come.

People have talked about some of the stories around child care. I’ve often made mention of the young mother who has twin boys who just graduated from one of our prototype child care centres, and they’re starting school. The notion of affordability and inclusiveness has made such a difference in their lives. They didn’t buy a house. They bought a camper, and they have spent weekends and summers going around, exploring British Columbia, visiting with relatives across Canada.

You watch those children change before your very eyes and know they’re happy to go to daycare. They’re happy to meet their friends there. They’re happy to meet people on the street now who are strangers and are able to feel comfortable in those exchanges, feeling part of community.

[5:15 p.m.]

Not every child is going to experience that, and up until now, many children were not afforded that opportunity. This is a time now where we can say, “This is coming for you, this is coming for you, and this is coming for you,” and we will see our economy grow. I think that one of the previous speakers was talking about how child care is good for the economy. It is. But it’s good for people too.

I think that this is a terrific opportunity for us to celebrate family, to celebrate whatever family looks like, to celebrate the progress that this future generation is going to have in making our lives better. I want to say thank you for bringing this legislation forward to the Minister of State for Child Care.

I’m probably done at this point. I look forward to hearing further debate on the other complementary piece of legislation.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, I turn to the minister to move second reading of the debate and to close the debate.

Hon. M. Dean: I want to thank all the MLAs who have spoken in chambers here today, this afternoon, on such an important matter. We’re creating and building a new social system, a new social program, in the province of British Columbia that’s making such a difference to families.

I heard people talk about: “Well, you know, we shouldn’t have to expect that grandparents are going to step up and take care of our kids. We actually need that universal, inclusive child care system.” Not only because we don’t want to burden people in our families with that child care, but because what it is, is an early learning system as well as child care. I hear people talking about how it also benefits the children and youth themselves. We know that actually, it helps them transition into school, so their outcomes in school are improved as well.

We know for Indigenous communities, as well, that we need to be supporting Indigenous communities to create Indigenous child care that is needed in their communities too.

It benefits families. We know that. That creates choice for families — with grandparents, with parents, with blended families — to be able to make decisions about what is best for their family. Also to be able to engage in the workforce in a way that they want to, so they actually have opportunities. For many families, especially for women, they don’t have that choice. That really shortens their opportunities for career development and, to put it candidly, it really impacts their ability to be not living in poverty by the time they reach retirement as well.

I really appreciated all of the comments about how critically important child care is to our economy. We really saw that because of the pandemic. Having child care is really a proven model that helps us to really revitalize the economy. We can get people back to work faster. It’s a generator. It actually creates jobs and creates that local generation of income and support as well.

I really just want to take the opportunity to say thank you again to the Minister of State for Child Care, who has worked so hard and with so much passion on this file, and all the staff who help us all the time with this really significant new social policy and social system that we’re building. That’s really going to make a difference to the lives of families across British Columbia.

With that, I move second reading.

Motion approved.

Hon. M. Dean: I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting after today.

Bill 15, Early Learning and Child Care Act, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. K. Conroy: I call that second reading on Bill 14, Early Childhood Educators Act, be heard now.

BILL 14 — EARLY CHILDHOOD
EDUCATORS ACT

Hon. M. Dean: I move that the bill be now read a second time.

I am honoured to be speaking to you again today, here in chambers, on the traditional territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-​speaking people, now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

[5:20 p.m.]

Today I have the honour of introducing the Early Childhood Educators Act. This bill is an important part of our government’s commitment to support early childhood educators.

Again, it’s my pleasure to give my sincere thanks to the Minister of State for Child Care and her staff, as well, for the excellent and passionate and comprehensive work that they have done on this bill to implement our commitment to ECEs through this legislation. These professionals provide quality care, compassion and guidance to children throughout the province, to our children in the province.

How important is that work? Every day they help inspire young children to become lifelong learners. As a child protection social worker for over 30 years, having worked with some of the most vulnerable children and families, I’ve seen firsthand how early childhood educators can make a real difference in a child’s life. This act shows how much we value the important role of ECEs and the role that they have in the lives of our children and then in the lives of their families and our communities.

We are creating one new stand-alone statute that is solely dedicated to the oversight of this profession. This act will also authorize and require the registrar to maintain a public registry of ECEs and approved ECE post-secondary programs, which will improve public confidence and trust. It will provide clear and consistent information regarding ECEs who are registered and the post-secondary programs which are approved.

The act will help maintain consistent standards for the quality of care for people working with young children. The statute will also reduce barriers to registration and make it easier for child care providers to hire skilled early childhood educators who received training abroad. It gives the registrar the authority to temporarily register internationally trained ECEs to allow them to work while completing the education and training needed to become fully qualified. The ECE Act will also allow the minister to enter into information-sharing agreements with ECE regulators in other provinces to verify the good standing of ECEs.

While we know that there is more to do, this is another important step we’re taking to better support early childhood educators and child care providers in B.C. At the end of the day, this means our children across the province are going to get the quality and inclusive child care that we know they will benefit from.

K. Kirkpatrick: Thank you to the minister and the minister of state.

I am very pleased today that we have this opportunity to talk about child care. I’m pleased to see that there is a lot of attention being paid to it, and it’s moving forward. So today I rise to debate on Bill 14, the Early Childhood Educators Act.

We have, as we know and we’ve talked about in this House, a critical shortage of early childhood educators in the province of British Columbia. Now, this shortage continues to get worse. Child care centres are reducing hours and even closing because of lack of qualified staff.

I know government has a commitment, particularly with these federal funds, to be able to add so many more spaces so quickly in the next few years. That, again, without the ability to staff these daycare centres, is going to make that next to impossible.

I want to thank early childhood educators. I think that the work that they do…. People don’t go into it to make a lot of money. They need to be supported so that they can make more money. They go into it most often because they’re passionate. They’re caring. They’re the kind of people that can step in and help and support our young people and do transition into school. They’re learning. They’re more successful when they transition into grades 1 and 2. I just want to say how much I appreciate the good work they do.

Now, I’ve spoken to child care providers in British Columbia who feel that, at this point, adding new spaces is almost futile. It’s futile for a number of reasons, but the lack of staff is really a significant one.

[5:25 p.m.]

Without a dramatic increase in attracting and retaining ECE workers, the ability for British Columbian families to access affordable, inclusive, quality child care is going to be limited, and government policies that support the sector currently are simply not working. So I’m looking forward to seeing where these bills can take us.

The staff shortage continues, and we support policies that can increase the number of educators from training and certifying to hiring. I am happy to hear that there is going to be the opportunity to look at other credentials. Most professions have the ability. I’m an accountant, and we’ve got competency frameworks. So if we can take a look at other backgrounds and what can be the equivalent, that’s a great way to be able to invite more people into this profession and be able to maintain the quality. I’m really looking forward to what that process is going to look like and how those other credentials will be recognized in the future.

This bill has two distinct purposes, as I understand it. One is the introduction of what appears to be…. Again, I don’t have all of the details. The minister has just shared more information than I gleaned from reading the bill. As I see it, there are two distinct purposes: the introduction of what looks like a complex registration process, and what sounds like a relatively heavy-handed compliance and enforcement component.

When I say heavy-handed, I mean that it is the impression when someone goes through this that there is a lot in this bill about compliance and enforcement — more so than there is about attracting and supporting ECE workers into the profession.

The other, which I find very interesting, is a duplication of post-secondary early childhood program approvals, which are already approved after very detailed reviews by subject-matter experts under the Ministry of Advanced Education. So the four concerns that I really have here: duplicated oversight with respect to the programs; barriers to registration — a bit of an intimidation factor and a complexity factor. Along with those, concerns with the registry about personal privacy and are there going to be potential increases in fees and administration for ECE workers working with this new act?

In light of the critical need for ECE workers, I question why a bill is being proposed that really…. We need the legislation. We need to move forward. But do we need to do it in a way that is adding complexity, which could be adding barriers to people wanting to come into the profession? We need to incentivize people to join the sector, not put up obstacles to their entry.

I fully support the need to ensure that we have qualified staff looking after our children, but there are many ways to support quality other than a stringent compliance and enforcement framework for this particular sector of employees. They’re not lawyers. This is a different kind of employee that we’re looking at, and I do have a concern that the emphasis on compliance, enforcement, investigators, officers and all of that is a bit intimidating.

As it stands, Bill 14 doesn’t actually address the critical shortage of ECE workers. I look forward, again, to learning more in committee stage about some of the specifics. On the surface, it doesn’t appear to be designed to attract or retain people into the profession. It appears to add barriers to entry.

After this bill was brought forward in the last sitting and the minister spoke about how important it is to support ECE workers with this legislation, child care providers and their staff were informed by government just in August that the additional $2 per hour, which was promised in this last budget as part of its ECE wage enhancement and originally supposed to be paid to ECE workers in September, is now not being paid until March of 2022.

I am repeating myself from earlier. These are very similar bills dealing with very similar things. Previously I said: “Gee, that’s a big administrative burden for the daycare providers.” Right now, I’m saying that this isn’t exactly a glowing example of showing ECE workers they’re supported.

[5:30 p.m.]

I understand, as well, that we’ve talked a lot about the bursaries that we have available to incent and to support people into child care and into taking the ECE programs. I was speaking with people last week about those bursaries, and my understanding is that there are twice as many people applying for those bursaries each semester than there are bursaries available.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

I would love, in these kinds of legislation and policies and process, if we could look at actually diverting, perhaps, some of the money that is going to be required for this duplication of regulatory oversight to really supporting more in the way of those bursaries, which I know are very helpful to those people looking at EC education.

I am pleased, if I’m understanding what’s being proposed — and I’m repeating myself now — about the ability to recognize those other credentials. I had a child care provider contact me who was quite frustrated that she couldn’t have her mother, who was a retired grade 1 teacher, cover staff shortages over the summer in her child care centre because that experience would not allow her to be able to work in the centre.

There are other issues outside of this legislation that are contributing to the ECE staffing struggle. I keep hearing from child care providers that it’s taking up to three weeks, sometimes four weeks, to get a criminal record check done before someone can begin working. That issue isn’t just for ECE workers. I’ve heard from social workers and other groups that are having the same challenge.

We have to look at what the other barriers are to people coming into the sector. What are the other barriers to employment? And if we look around at regulation and all the requirements, is there some way that we can speed that up and support ECE workers?

ECE workers need a different criminal record check for every single employer. It really limits their ability to cover in more than…. You know, if there’s summer coverage somewhere or something else that they can do, they’re unable to do that because of some of these other requirements.

I want to focus more on the registry now. This act creates…. These things are not…. It’s one registry, but these feel like very distinct things that are within this registry. The act is creating a registry which will publicly list, on a website, information with each ECE worker registered in B.C. and the courses that are approved.

The vast majority of people working as early childhood educators in B.C. are women. Many are single. Many are immigrants. This bill is proposing to publicly list their names and other information about them, including educational institutions and employers, on a public website. Now, this can be intimidating and can make someone feel vulnerable. So I do have serious privacy concerns about this registry. Again, we’ll look forward to hearing more about how those things are being dealt with in committee stage.

I’m also concerned that the process being introduced is time-consuming. I would hope that the forms and process are not overly burdensome, and I would hope that ECE registrants would not have to pay additional fees to what they’re currently paying to get their licence now.

It appears that a significant responsibility of the registrar’s job is already being done by the Ministry of Advanced Education. I’ve spent the majority of my career in higher education — 12 years at UBC, three as regulator for the Private Career Training Institutions. I was a member of the Degree Quality Assessment Board under the Ministry of Advanced Education, a member of the B.C. Council for International Education, and I’ve worked with two post-secondary accreditation bodies. I’m mentioning this that I would like to demonstrate that I do have an understanding of the approval and quality oversight of education.

Division 3 of this bill sets out that the registrar, as created under this act, will have the ability to approve in full, approve subject to a condition or limitation, withhold approval or cancel approval of an early child education program. In British Columbia, under the Ministry of Advanced Education, there are already mechanisms for doing all of these exact same things and for ensuring that both private and public post-secondary training institutions are reviewed and approved.

Currently in B.C., any institution offering an ECE program — any of those programs that are required to register as an ECE worker — would already be required to either be certified under the Private Training Act or by the Degree Quality Assessment Board under the Ministry of Advanced Education.

[5:35 p.m.]

For example, the bachelor early childhood and education degree offered through Capilano University has already gone through a detailed quality assessment by subject-matter experts under the Degree Quality Assessment Board and has been issued consent from the Minister of Advanced Education. But according to this proposed act, there would now be, additionally, an entire new process layered on top of that already existing process to again review this program for quality.

This creates significant duplication for both the institutions offering the programs. They’re going to have to duplicate all their regulatory reporting but also government and staff resources. Why do you have all these people doing what is virtually going to have the same outcome at the end of the day? If the registrar is going to engage subject-matter experts to do all of these program reviews — which I presume they would — I would not be surprised if they were actually accessing the identical subject-matter experts that PTA and DQAB are already accessing to do their reviews of these programs.

The process for program approval in Bill 14 duplicates directly some of what is set out in the Private Training Act and regulations, with the PTA process being much more in depth already. I’ll give an example. The inspection powers in the proposed Bill 14 are almost identical to the inspection powers under the Private Training Act.

It is conceivable, if there is an issue with an ECE program, that inspectors could show up from both PTA and the registrar under this Bill 14. Both of them would have the ability to gain access to the school, seize records, interview students and staff, shut down operations. This is like having two different police forces in the same town responding to the same incident.

I’m trying to understand. In what scenario would the registrar for early childhood educators not approve an early childhood education program that has already been approved by the PTA or by DQAB? What is the issue that is trying to be addressed by having this duplication and providing this authority to the registrar?

I’ll ask: if quality of education has been an issue in the past, does it mean that the current system under the Ministry of Advanced Education is not properly approving for quality? Is there an issue with quality in those programs, even after they go through the processes under the Ministry of Advanced Education? As long as this is not a solution looking for a problem….

So why wouldn’t the bill just reference a program being approved as a program for the purposes of an ECE registrant? Why can’t it just reference, as long as that program is approved under the PTA or DQAB? That would be very simple, and it would not require an entire duplication of services.

Is there concern from MCFD and the Ministry of Education, wherever this ends up in the future, that they are able to better review and determine quality of a post-secondary education program than the Ministry of Advanced Education is able to do at this point? This is a question of whether the Ministry of Family Development or the Ministry of Education are really staying in their lane on this. It sounds like they’re moving over to doing something that is not within the mandate of either of those ministries.

We need policies and legislations that are going to encourage people to join this profession, one that people can be proud of. But I don’t believe that Bill 14, as it is written today, addresses those critical issues facing recruitment and retention of early childhood educators.

[5:40 p.m.]

I want to see legislation that sets out how government will support those seeking to enter this profession through access to education, professional development, fair wages, recognition of equivalent skills and experience. I really am puzzled at the duplication of the regulation of private career training programs or bachelor programs in early childhood education from what is already being done under the Ministry of Advanced Education.

I look forward to learning more about this bill. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak.

Hon. K. Chen: I am really honoured to be speaking here from the unceded, traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-​speaking people.

I’m so grateful to have this opportunity to speak to this legislation that will be critical to support the work we’ve done to build an affordable, quality, inclusive early learning and care system for all B.C. families.

Of course, I’m always happy when I speak about child care, and today we have two legislations that have been introduced and are being spoken on. Then I’ve been hearing from members from all sides of this House, to talk about the importance of child care.

I have to say I’m very grateful that so many members in this House care about child care. There is a lot of common ground that we share, a lot of the same visions that we share, and hope that we will continue to make child care a priority for this province.

Because of the work that we’ve done since 2017, and since the 2018 budget, to build an inclusive early learning and care system…. We’ve learned a lot along the way. We know that in order to build this new social program for B.C. families, we need to ensure that we have a strong, properly supported workforce of early childhood educators. They are really the workforce behind the workforce.

We know this from before. But the importance of the work that early childhood educators do has been even more highlighted during this pandemic as we’ve seen parents trying to return to work and to access early learning and care services and as employers are trying to recruit and retain their workers to be able to support our economic recovery. The work of early childhood educators is critical to our economy and to our community as a whole.

As a working mom who continues to struggle with child care, I have been really thankful for the support that my son, my seven-year-old, and myself have been receiving from early childhood educators and child care professionals — whether it’s school-aged care, which my son is now utilizing; or under-five care, when my son actually joined tons of different programs. In-home multi-age care, family child care, group providers, preschools — he actually did quite a bit of programs.

I have personally seen firsthand how early childhood education is critical to our young children, to build that strong foundation for them so they can build on their social-emotional learning and to be able to connect them into the K-to-12 system.

I really want to take this opportunity to thank all the important work of the very diverse child care providers and educators for their critical work to give all of their best to care for our young kids when parents like myself are unable to, when we’re at work or attending to our other obligations. I thank them for being able to look after our young children.

Most importantly, early childhood educators give us peace of mind, knowing that our children are well cared for when we’re at work or when we attend to our other obligations. I know that all parents want this peace of mind, knowing that their children are safe, happy and inspired to their best each day.

That is why early childhood educators deserve our highest recognition and respect. That is why today we are bringing forward this legislation to support and recognize the work they do. For many, many years, this was a profession that has been hampered by high turnover and low wages. I remember when I started this work in 2017.

Many child care advocates at the time called the child care situation a child care chaos. It was chaotic because there was so little investment into the sector. Child care providers were struggling to maintain their services. Parents were struggling to find spaces or be able to afford spaces. The cost of child care can be as high as your rent or mortgage payment. Parents were struggling to return to the workforce as employers were struggling to retain workers.

[5:45 p.m.]

I know I do talk about this quite often, because it’s important to think about those families, to think about families that have struggled with the lack of access to quality, affordable child care. For early childhood educators, they have been struggling with lack of support. Many of them, especially smaller providers, family child care, tend to work in silos. So when we started this work, we were looking at all the challenges and all the struggles and trying to figure out what we do to support the sector.

We also looked back at what was done before we came to government in 2017. While there were some investments into the early childhood education sector in the late ’90s, unfortunately, when the change of government happened in 2001, some of the measures and investments were taken away, including a critical wage top-up for many early childhood educators that was eliminated. It resulted in the loss of early childhood educators and actually resulted in the closure of many child care centres.

I have personally met early childhood educators who lost up to $5 an hour in wages. Imagine that. You’re an early childhood educator, and you’re getting a wage top-up, and you’re counting on that $5 to be able to make ends meet, and you lose that overnight. That was exactly what happened. It was devastating.

It actually motivated tons of early childhood educators to come to Victoria. I’ve seen some photos of early childhood educators demanding an inclusive, universal child care system, demanding better wages and demanding their wage enhancement back. Many advocates, for years, because of that, have pushed the government to do more.

Finally, in 2017, we started that journey to be able to come back and look at the challenges that families and early childhood educators were seeing, because we know the lack of early learning and quality child care services hurt our families.

When you put your children in unsafe or unqualified child care centres that you’re not sure have the ability to look after your kids or may be unregistered or unlicensed — because parents have been struggling to find services, and some parents are so desperate that they will take any services that they can find — that is not good for our young children. We have seen situations and stories because of unsafe child care that could hurt our children and families. That is not acceptable. Parents should not have to be forced to make those choices that they’re not sure about.

That is why, in 2017, when we became government, we were turning things around for the sector, for families and early childhood educators with our comprehensive Childcare B.C. plan, with over three dozen strategies. I’ve actually lost count of how many new strategies we wrote out since 2017, with a $2.3 billion investment to support families, to support early childhood educators, to support providers. It is critical to have that strong foundation for our children and for our providers to be able to support families across the province.

It is also important to remember how early childhood educators are there for our children during the most important years of their lives. Most of a child’s brain develops the fastest before the age of six. Having access to quality early learning experiences delivered by quality early childhood educators can give our children a strong foundation for their future. As we create more and more child care spaces, it is critical that we also recruit and retain early childhood educators to meet the growing demand.

I cannot emphasize enough that our Childcare B.C. plan is comprehensive. You cannot only focus on affordability, accessibility or equality or inclusion by patchwork. That patchwork no longer works. It is important that we do everything together. We’re bringing down the cost of child care as fast as possible. We’re accelerating the creation of spaces, because it takes time to build spaces. You need to get that investment there and to start building those spaces as soon as possible.

At the same time, you need to continue to support early childhood educators along the journey. Those pillars go hand in hand together, because the work of early childhood educators is critical to the well-being of our families and communities. They are really the backbone of all the work that we’re doing. They are the backbone of the early learning and care system that we’re building together, which will be critical to support our economic recovery.

That is why this Early Childhood Educators Act is such an important part of our work to better support early childhood educators. It lays the foundation for the work ahead of us. We are now going into the fourth year of our plan.

[5:50 p.m.]

It is critical to continue to build on this foundation that we’ve built since 2017 and to make sure that the support that we’re giving to early childhood educators and families is so strong that it will lead us to the end goal, which is the inclusive, universal child care system for all B.C. families.

This act will remove the regulation of ECEs and ECE assistants from the Community Care and Assisted Living Act and create a new statute, a stand-alone statute, under the authority of the Minister Responsible for Child Care, by bringing all the pieces — the broken pieces that have left there, not fixed and not being looked at — bringing that work all together under a new stand-alone act.

When this legislation is passed, the new Early Childhood Educators Act will strengthen and support the early care and learning workforce. We are showing how much we value the sector by having one statute solely dedicated to the oversight of this profession and no longer in other legislation as an attachment. This is going to be a focus on early childhood education, to highlight the importance of their work, to raise the profiles of early childhood educators as an important and valued profession.

It will also help to signal that we as government are placing on the registration of people working with some of our youngest and vulnerable citizens…. If we really think about the work of early childhood educators and the importance of their work, as parents, we are putting our children, the most important thing normally in our lives, to someone — a professional who is looking after our young children. That work is so critical. We need to make sure it’s high quality, it’s safe, it’s well looked after — our kids are well looked after.

This legislation will help to improve public confidence and trust. Parents and child care providers will be able to trust the early childhood educators registered under the Early Childhood Education Act to meet a high quality standard. The public registry will allow parents, employers and prospective early childhood education students to make informed decisions by providing clear and consistent information about early childhood educators who are registered, and also knowing which post-secondary institutions are approved to provide high-quality training and programs for early childhood educators.

This work really builds on the work that we actually did in the first year of our Childcare B.C. plan. At the time, we had made amendments to the Community Care and Assisted Living Act to make sure there is more information that could be available for parents who are choosing their child care providers, because we’ve heard heartbreaking stories of children being hurt in child care centres that parents have little information to, that could be unregistered, unlicensed.

We had amended that Community Care and Assisted Living Act at the time to make sure, whether you’re a licensed child care or non-licensed child care, that the information about the centre’s history or the owner or the operator is accessible to families who want to utilize the service of the centre. That change has given parents more confidence of the child care centres that they’re choosing, the providers they’re choosing, to be able to access child care services.

But we need to do more. That was just the beginning of the journey. We need to make sure we fix the child care chaos and the struggle and the gap that existed towards the Community Care and Assisted Living Act. By this stand-alone statute, we’re actually going into the next step. We’re bringing this to the future of our new inclusive early learning and care system, to make sure parents and providers and early childhood educators, and also employers as well, have that access to the information they need to ensure the early childhood educator or the post-secondary institution that they’re enrolled in — that information is accessible by the public.

When passed, the act will also enable us to make im­provements to ensure standards of care and quality are consistent for people working with young children, because the government had not paid attention to child care until 2017. There is a lack of focus and not being a priority. The system is very broken. There are so many ways of delivering a child care service. There are so many different ways of paying early childhood educators or even charging families.

When I started this work in 2017 and during the past few years, I cannot tell you the amount of information, the things that I’ve learned from the diverse ways of running child care services. Now we’re pulling it together. We need to make sure we create a new system, and this new system will have more consistent quality standards and services that parents can count on, that parents can rely on to make sure their children are properly looked after with quality early learning and care services.

[5:55 p.m.]

This new legislation will also help us to attract more in-demand early childhood educators to B.C. by reducing barriers to registration. It will make it easier for child care providers to hire skilled early learning childhood educators who received training outside of our province or abroad.

I have to thank the communities that have come forward, especially during our UBCM meetings and other engagements. I’ve heard from communities and providers coming to us and saying: “We would really love to see the registry having the ability to expedite the registration process for out-of-province or overseas early childhood educators who have similar qualifications.”

This is really a call to action. This is something that we are taking the action to be able to address this challenge and be able to make sure that down the road, the registrar will have the authority to temporarily register internationally trained or out-of-province-trained ECEs, to allow them to work in their profession to meet the immediate demand of the sector — as we all know, early childhood educators are in high demand — while they complete their education and training that’s needed to become fully qualified.

This legislation will also give clear authority to the registrar to get information needed to investigate complaints and help to reduce the time it takes to complete investigations. It will also allow the registrar to suspend, cancel or place conditions on the approval of training programs if there are any issues that arise. It will really help to enhance quality of services and support information-sharing with ECE regulators in other provinces to verify the good standing of people working as registered early childhood educators.

This work will be done hand in hand with the sector, with professionals and academics and specialists from the sector and post-secondary institutions. We will be doing a lot of engagement to be able to build a universal, inclusive early learning system that is high quality and that focuses, as many members earlier today have talked about that, on our young children to make sure we give them the best quality care possible.

Given the anticipated growth in child care over the next five to ten years…. I think it will continue to grow, with more kids coming into our community. Even today we had a member from Langley announcing the great news from his family, saying that he’s welcoming another baby. This is really the time to make sure we meet that demand, to make sure there’s a robust framework in place to support this high in-demand profession.

This Early Childhood Educators Act is an important step in the right direction as we continue to work towards that goal to provide quality, affordable, inclusive early learning and care services to families who want it or need it. This legislation will support the investments and the work that we’ve been doing during the past few years through our Childcare B.C. plan and hand in hand to build this plan with early childhood educators and providers.

While we still have much more work to do, we have made significant progress in just 3½ years, four years, to support the work of early childhood educators. As we started to accelerate the creation of spaces and make child care more affordable for families, we have also rolled out over a dozen strategies and measures on recruitment and retention to support the work of early childhood educators, which include bursaries, training, wage enhancement and many programs that will help to make sure early childhood educators get the support that they require.

For example, through this year’s budget, we are doubling the wage enhancement, bringing the wage enhancement to a total of $4 an hour to support early childhood educators. This is a critical step to ensure early childhood educators get better wages. Just to put this in perspective, when we started this work in 2017, at the time, early childhood educators were paid about $17 to $18 per hour. This wage enhancement will bring the median wage to about $25 per hour. That is because of the wage enhancement and also because of the work that we’ve been doing on minimum wage increases.

For example, when we started this work for child care, I met early childhood educators who were making minimum wage at the time. That was not acceptable. How can we put our babies into a professional’s hands who is only being paid minimum wage? I couldn’t get it, I didn’t understand it, and this is why we started this journey to start a wage enhancement program.

[6:00 p.m.]

My colleague who is now the minister responsible for Forests, Lands and Natural Resources, who used to be the Minister for Children and Family Development, worked hand in hand with me on the start of the Childcare B.C. plan…. The minister is a former early childhood educator and has seen the struggles of early childhood educators in this province.

It was not acceptable for early childhood educators to be paid minimum wage. It was not acceptable even if they were paid $17, $18. We’re bringing it up to a median wage of about $25 with the wage enhancement. We will continue to support early childhood educators, and we have also made a commitment to build a wage grid with the federal government to make sure we’re looking at stable, better compensations.

Because of that work, either through wage enhancement, bursaries, training seats, we’ve heard many stories across the province. The opposition can make all the noise they want, but these are the stories from real people and early childhood educators.

I met an early childhood educator, Kim, who was almost leaving the field because she could not afford her own child care. She was struggling with low wages. She works for a really good non-profit in the Lower Mainland, but she could not make ends meet for her family. When she was about to think about leaving her profession, the wage enhancement came in, and her child got into a child care centre that offers affordable child care. Because of that, she was able to stay in the workforce. And when I met her….

Kim’s story is not alone. I’ve met many early childhood educators. I met a friend — I bumped into them in a playground — who said: “Katrina, I’ve been hoping to connect with you to thank you, because my wife is an early childhood educator.” Because of the wage enhancement, because they were able to get the affordable child care benefit, they finally were able to afford a small condo in Port Moody to be able to start their family together. Those stories are across the province.

We are continuing to invest in this sector, including supporting over 1,100 training seats, looking at dual-credit programs, work-integrated pilot, bursaries, pedagogy programs. There are so many programs, and I would encourage the opposition members to look into some of our programs and hear the stories and the impact — the positive benefits and the impacts that have been brought to early childhood educators.

Earlier this summer…. Our ministry and our team worked really hard throughout the summer to make sure we also work with the federal government, again, on making sure that we can bring universal child care to B.C. families as B.C. becomes the first province to implement the national child care plan. That includes a commitment to build a wage grid, which has been something that early childhood educators and professionals have been calling for, for years. We’re working hard on that.

Building an inclusive universal child care system is really the largest social policy shift that our province has seen in decades. We are building a new social program. I hope, regardless of all the members’ political colours, we come together to work on this plan together.

This has been historical. The child care sector across Canada, especially from B.C., has been so excited about all the changes. The legislation that we are introducing today, whether it’s the Early Learning and Child Care Act or the Early Childhood Educators Act that I’m speaking to right now, will really help to make sure we go on this journey to create this new social program.

This is historical. This has never happened in B.C. before. By introducing the early childhood educators legislation, we’ll improve the quality and consistency of training for early childhood educators. We are making sure we are prepared for the future growth in the sector to meet the future demands of families and also the very diverse needs of families.

We know investing in early childhood education and supporting professionals is also critical to gender equity. So 97 percent of early childhood educators in B.C. are women. Women and mothers have historically been taking the responsibility of looking after our young children. This Early Childhood Educators Act will ensure that we create a more equitable society. It will help to ensure children get the best start in life with professional, caring, skilled educators who are valued and supported. It will ensure early childhood educators receive the support and recognition that they deserve.

I really want to take this opportunity to thank all the early learning care professionals, families and advocates who have been pushing hard and asking the government to invest in creating an inclusive universal child care system.

[6:05 p.m.]

We know we’ve made significant progress since Budget 2018, and we know we have a lot more work to do, especially as we go through this pandemic and this very difficult time together. But we know that we also need to continue with our significant investment into early learning and care. We need to continue building more spaces that will become long-term community assets.

We also need to continue to do the work to make child care more affordable, and we need to ensure…. In order to make all those things happen for B.C. families, we need to support the work of early childhood educators. That is why I hope that all members in this House will support this legislation that will help us to carry out this important work for this critical workforce and for families today for generations to come.

This Early Childhood Educators Act, along with our Early Learning and Child Care Act, will really keep us on track of the work that we’ve done since 2017 — to invest in child care, to create a new social program that will bring an affordable, high-quality, inclusive early learning and care system for all B.C. families and the work that we’re doing together. We can make a more equitable future for our generations to come.

This is historical. This is critical to make sure that our families’ children get the support that they need, and we support this workforce that’s doing such critical work.

C. Oakes: I am truly delighted to have the opportunity to speak to this very important bill. I want to thank the passion of members that have come forward and have spoken on this important bill. I want to start, which is critically important as well, to thank all the child care educators, providers, throughout this province, because at the heart, you are taking care of our most precious in each of our communities.

I want to thank the member of the official opposition for her words earlier today on a previous debate, because, in reflection, I really appreciate that when we come to this House, we come forward with our personal experiences. I, too, value early childhood education, and the words that she spoke, really, in reflection, I think, are critically important, because all of us want to make sure our children are safe, that they have quality child care, and that they have access to amazing people.

I wanted to use my time today to talk about my community and some of the incredible early childhood educators in my community. I won’t name names, because some of the conversations that I’ve had have been very personal, and I want to respect what they have raised with me. But we have childhood educators that have taken care of children for multigenerations. We all have that, I know, in our communities, where somebody may have taken care of a child that’s now an adult and their children are now in that same daycare. I think that is so incredibly encouraging and rewarding, to see that love and that passion that’s carried forward for many, many generations within our communities.

At the heart of every piece of legislation that comes to this House, what is critically important, I think, for all of us, is to reflect on how this is going to impact the people in my community. How is it going to impact the people, our constituents? And when legislation gets put forward, we reach out to our constituents. We ask the questions of what they feel these bills mean to them and what the impact will be. And I’d like to take a few minutes on just sharing the concerns that people in my constituency have around this particular piece of legislation.

Really, at the heart of this, we are trying to make sure that we have affordable, accessible child care in our communities. We can all agree to that. The challenge becomes when you start looking at the changes and the historic plan that the member previous talked about and the changes that the NDP government has made to child care.

Is that historic change actually creating more spaces in our community, more quality spaces in our community? Are we seeing the ability in our rural community and put the rural lens into what is happening? Are we seeing more people going into early childhood education training? Are there more spaces so that the people, the constituents, the families that I talk to on a regular basis…? Are they having easier access to child care? Do they feel that their lives are more affordable right now?

[6:10 p.m.]

I think each of us can ask our constituents that question. Is life feeling more affordable? Is it easier for us to get child care for our children? And is it child care where we can leave our children and know that, like the member of the Third Party talked about, it leads to lifelong learners and all of that passion?

That is the question that I wanted to bring to this debate today. The reality is when we start layering on regulation and we start layering on nuances that increase administrative challenges and we have duplication of services and we have multiple challenges that we put in place, we are in fact creating barriers for those childhood providers that have done such an incredible service to our community for so long.

The reality is that that incredible operator I talked about at the beginning of my comments has decided they’re no longer going to continue. They’re no longer going to continue to provide this incredible, valuable service in our community because it’s just getting too difficult. Under the NDP government’s plan, it is getting too difficult — the policies, the regulations.

Please know that I am a firm advocate and believer that, of course, we need qualified child care. Of course we do. But when you start having duplications, when you start looking at regulations and policies that are creating an increase in the barriers for operators and small businesses to take that risk, to make sure that their passion and their vocation and their love for children…. When they turn away from that because it is getting too difficult, that is something I think each of us needs to reflect on.

I also reached out to talk to our child care and resource referral about what is currently happening in our community around the critical shortage of qualified early childhood educators and how we are really addressing this in rural communities. We have a significant shortage with infant and toddler space, and some of the policies that the NDP government brought forward previously have made that even more difficult in our rural communities. I think it’s something that we all need to be reflecting on.

In the estimates for Advanced Education last year, I asked the Minister of Advanced Education about the fact that our labour market studies show that we have 8,000 job openings in the next ten years for early childhood educators. How are we going to address that?

The member previous talked about the investment that is being made by the government in early childhood care spaces, but here’s where we have to dig deeper into the numbers. If you look at the numbers, it’s not new early childhood spaces that are being created, for the most part. It’s retraining, upskilling. All important, but are we recreating new spaces that are going to meet the need of the 8,000 early childhood educators that we need in our communities? That is something that we need to reflect on.

Let’s be clear. Let’s be transparent when we put out information. When the government puts out information of what they’re doing, let’s make sure that if it says that we’re putting investment in early childhood education, it’s actually, “Here are the new early childhood education seats that are going to happen in our communities,” so we all know we can look forward to that in our communities and know that we have that stream online and understand that some of that money is going to be upskilling and retraining.

But it’s not actually creating new spaces. It’s not actually creating a solution to a problem that we all have identified who have spoken to this bill. That is something that I think is critically important too.

Then the question comes about how our Indigenous and First Nations are going to be reflected in the training. I have some incredible stories that I want to bring forward. I heard the member talk about the importance of having Indigenous-led child care in our communities and to have that ability.

One of the changes that has happened from the changes that the NDP have brought forward is that some of that community-specific training that we used to have for early childhood education in our training institutions has changed. In our region, we used to have a really strong focus on the southern Carrier and Dakelh First Nations, and they contributed so much and were part of the early childhood education and the training in our college. Now we’ve gone to a more universal level of education, which sometimes doesn’t reflect what is happening in our communities.

[6:15 p.m.]

I’ve talked to our training instructors in our community to talk about what that looks like. I also looked at: where is the investment to make sure that we are funding, appropriately, training spaces in our communities?

There’s this lovely, young, dynamic leader in my community. In fact, I was really proud that she opened up one of my events. Her name is Destinee Boyd. She is a lifelong princess for Lhtako First Nations, and her passion is to be an early childhood educator. There is so much going on with Lhtako First Nations right now, and she wants to go in and get trained.

That is a goal that we should all want to achieve in our communities. We want to make sure we inspire young people to consider what an opportunity it is to go, to train and to be taking care of our wonderful children in our communities. I wish Destinee so much success.

I’m incredibly proud of all the work you’re doing. I know you are going to inspire other young people in our community to do the same.

Let’s make sure that the training is available, because she had to go out of town. Here’s what I’m going to say. It is critically important that we invest in training that our young people can get in our region, because it is really difficult when young people leave from our rural communities to go and get training elsewhere. It’s really hard to recruit and retain them afterwards.

My plea when we’re looking at investments: please do not forget about our communities and the importance of our colleges and our training institutions right in our communities — the important impact that they make in ensuring that. If we’re going to have a successful plan, you need to invest in our smaller colleges.

One of the things I also heard is that for many of these programs — the calls for proposals to put these training programs on — we don’t have somebody in our colleges that specifically writes proposals. It is somebody who has to work off the side of their desk in order to access the training in our communities, and it is a real barrier for a lot of our rural communities to access some of these training programs that the government is announcing. I think it’s something that I hope the government will really pay attention to.

I talked again about these amazing operators that have invested their hearts and souls into our children for many generations. I want to raise some of the concerns that they had brought forward to my office — just about the challenges of all the increased paperwork and the recording and the administration costs. I know that this is probably going to elicit some groans or grunts from many members, but we had a really significant focus when we were in government on: how do we reduce red tape and regulation?

A lot of people will take that, and they’ll take it into all sorts of different areas. But really, it was about: how do you make sure that that connection you have with your citizens, as a government, is streamlined, that you’re not duplicating things and that you’re really helping to support administration forms and policies? And it was critically important.

I think the fear a lot of people have in small businesses, when they’re deciding to take risks to put investment into their businesses, is: are we going to go back to the ’90s NDP playbook, when we saw red tape, regulation and bureaucratic increase by a government increase so significantly that they drove out business in British Columbia?

Let us never forget that the critically important impact of small businesses provided by child care operators in our communities — so many of them are women — is critical. Let us not drive them out of our community. I heard that the government has made significant progress.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Let us just take a moment to look at what significant progress has looked like. The NDP announced that they were going to promise 120,000 spaces. But in fact, there are 6,300 spaces that are created and only 3,000 at $10-a-day. Is that affordable?

[6:20 p.m.]

You can take numbers and you can redistribute them. We’ve seen that in the NDP math; certainly not math that I have taken. But the fact is: do you have access to child care in your community? Do you have child care in your community? Does the math work?

What I can share with the members of this House…. For communities like mine, for rural communities right across this province, when we are told that we’re getting $10-a-day daycare, in my community it’s seven spaces. Seven spaces.

When I look at the record of the B.C. Liberal government, I would like to proudly talk about the single-parent initiative that invested in 39,000 people, that changed people’s lives, that invested in women and single parents so that they could go and get training, so that they could have their child care supported.

We may have done things differently, but never underestimate the fact that under the B.C. Liberals there was significant investment in child care, in early childhood education. I would welcome the member to actually take her meetings with the child care development centres in our communities, talk to our communities…

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

C. Oakes: …about the child care development centres that have seen programs cut, important programs cut in our communities.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: All right. Calm down. One person at a time. Let’s have one speaker only, one at a time.

C. Oakes: I would encourage the members to listen with an open mind to understand the programs around early childhood education that have been cut in communities like mine, because of the changes in the policies that the NDP government has put forward.

Let’s talk about the B.C. Liberal plan and what we invested for childhood spaces. Let’s look at the math again — 39,959 spaces. I don’t know. That’s 39,959 spaces. It’s a pretty good track record of childhood spaces, right? So break that down by month. That’s 3,300 per year.

Now let’s look at the NDP — 3,000 spaces in your pilot for $10-a-day daycare. In the community of Cariboo North, that’s seven spaces.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

C. Oakes: I can tell you that the single-parent initiative, which was a very important initiative to ensure that there was affordable access to child care in communities like mine, had a significant impact on hundreds of people in my community. And let’s just say that if you’re looking at seven spaces or hundreds of spaces, I can say that in our community, the NDP plan is a fail.

When we look at our small communities at the end of the day, when we look at legislation, it is critically important — will this actually help the citizens of British Columbia? Will this help families find child care? Will this ensure that people will take that next step to be early childhood educators? I could say that the public just don’t trust the NDP anymore, because you continue to make promises that you cannot deliver on.

Interjections.

C. Oakes: Constant promises that are not delivered. If you look at what’s happening on the ground, it does not reflect what is actually being said by this NDP government.

Then the final comment I’ll have is that I heard about the dual-credit program. Well, I am a passionate supporter of dual-credit programs. I went to my school district. I said: “Look, early childhood education is an excellent example to partner with our school district and our college on.”

We have been leaders in the past in our district around the shoulder tapper program, which the government cut, by the way. Here’s an apprentice program that is important in resources and trades and training. The NDP government cut it.

So here’s the thing. I went to our school district and said: “Here is an opportunity. We need early childhood educators in our community, so let us figure out how we can make sure we can have that partnership.”

Guess what. That program is not on the table in our community.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members, Cariboo North has the floor.

C. Oakes: So the NDP government can say that they have all these programs, that they have everything that’s available. They’re creating all these spaces. The math speaks for itself.

[6:25 p.m.]

The math speaks for itself. Enough rhetoric. Does the plan work? Will the legislation actually help achieve the goals that the government has put forward?

And the final thing is — and this is more, I guess, to whatever minister has the responsibility for regulatory reform — the government does still have an agreement ensuring that there is a net zero on regulatory reform. My question to the government: because of this commitment, what is being taken off the books if you’re adding on increased regulation?

Let’s just take a quick moment to look at what happened in 2019, when we’ve seen that we’ve had hundreds of new regulations that have been put in place and the government is not meeting up to what they have signed off on. Again, another broken promise. We need childcare in our communities. We need it to be affordable, but above all, we need it to be delivered.

N. Sharma: I am so proud to stand up here today and speak to the two pieces of legislation, with Bill 14 that came and the work that the Minister of State for Child Care and the previous minister of MCFD, with FLNRO, have worked on for so long — and the decades of $10-a-day child care advocates that have been working tirelessly to get governments to take action on $10-a-day child care. Four years ago we got a government that actually had a Minister of State for Child Care and set up a plan that put $2.3 billion in child care over that time, has given $411 million back to parents through the affordability measures, and has created nearly 26,000 new child care spaces.

Those aren’t just numbers. Those are lives and changes that people have in their families. I know that the minister of state hears this all the time, but we’ve all heard stories in our community of what these impacts mean. They mean that families have more money to put into other things. They can live more affordable lives, and they can also start to go back to work, which is what part of the program is — women starting to go back to work.

When I reflect on the work that’s been done in this short amount of time, I think about not only the advocates that spent so long advocating for $10-a-day but also those women that didn’t have the opportunity — didn’t have the opportunity for affordable child care — whose brains and talents were not in the workforce.

Mr. Speaker, my first time — noting the time, I move to keep my place in the debate and adjourn the debate.

N. Sharma moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. K. Conroy moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 6:28 p.m.