Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Surrey Centre.

I appreciate, as always, the opportunity to rise in the House on behalf of my constituents in Winnipeg South Centre. It is timely that I have the opportunity to talk about this bill because just last week, during our constituency week, I visited Splash Early Learning Centre in my riding. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to get a tour of the facility. I noted that there were some really interesting and innovative things they were doing, and I will come back to that later on in my remarks.

As my hon. colleague from Winnipeg North has mentioned on a number of occasions today in the chamber, our home province of Manitoba has realized $10-a-day day care, and this is part of the $30-billion investment over a five-year period that is going to help benefit families, kids and ultimately educators throughout our public education and private systems across the country as a result of this investment.

A system that helps to ensure families across Canada can access high-quality, affordable and inclusive early learning and child care is critical no matter where they live. As has been said many times in this chamber, child care is not a luxury. It is a necessity. Parents should have the opportunity to build both a family and a career, and children deserve the best possible start in life. As members know, I spent a good chunk of my career as a teacher and as a principal, and there is no doubt, in my experiences working with young people and families, that when they had access to early child care and early learning opportunities, we saw the benefits of that later on in their educational journeys.

Bill C-35, which we are debating at the moment, would reinforce the Government of Canada's long-term commitment to early learning and child care. It would do so by articulating the federal goal, vision and principles for a Canada-wide system. Bill C-35 would also enshrine our commitment to sustained and ongoing funding to provinces, territories and indigenous peoples. In addition, Bill C-35 would enhance accountability through regular reporting to Parliament on the progress towards an early learning and child care system. Finally, Bill C-35 would establish in law the national advisory council on early learning and child care.

I will say that I think one of the most important and critical components of this bill is those last pieces I referenced. In particular, they are the necessity that Parliament report back on the progress that has been made in the agreements across the country and the national advisory council. I think it is critical that the input of experts from across Canada is taken into consideration.

Early learning and child care are essential needs. The early learning and child care system will drive economic growth, increase mothers' participation in the workforce, and guarantee that no parent will ever have to choose between returning to work or staying at home to take care of children.

To achieve these goals, we need to put in place mechanisms that will ensure that the early learning and child care system runs smoothly. One of those mechanisms is without a doubt the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care.

The National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care will play an important role in providing third-party expert advice and thereby complement federal expertise for designing the system. The council will serve as a consultative forum on the issues and challenges that the early learning and child care system might face. The council will represent the early learning and child care sector. Its members will reflect Canada's geographic, cultural and linguistic diversity.

I am pleased that my colleagues from the Bloc Québécois and my colleagues from Quebec in the other parties are here. I think that the Quebec model is outstanding.

As my colleague from Winnipeg North mentioned a few minutes ago, there are many lessons we can learn from the Quebec model, which has had many success stories in recent decades.

I recognize there are ongoing challenges, just as there are at the beginning of any program. Of course, $10-a-day day care is a critical component. The cost is essential to ensuring that families can access this much-needed service. However, at the same time, we do need to continue to focus, and I acknowledge that, on some of the other challenges that face our system.

This would include making sure that we have enough early childhood educators, they are well paid and there are incentives, such as benefit packages, that come along with the work so that these educators do not get scooped up into the system to go on to be, for example, educational assistants.

This also means working with our colleges and universities. I am really pleased to know that, when I speak with early childhood educators and those post-secondary institutions and families on the ground in my riding of Winnipeg South Centre in Manitoba, I am seeing that this is starting to take place, but there is no doubt that there is room to grow.

One of the really interesting opportunities that are presented is the partnerships that can arise through early childhood learning centres and other community infrastructure, and this was displayed to me last week. As I mentioned, I went to Splash Early Learning Centre. What was really interesting, and I think it is perhaps something we should be talking about across party lines and across the country, is that, in this particular instance, there was a church in my riding, and the church was starting to see that the congregation was diminishing over time for a variety of different reasons.

The church decided that it was going to invest upfront and renovate a substantial portion of the space that it occupied and then, in turn, after the renovation was made, it was going to rent this out to the early childhood education centre. That is exactly what happened. This has provided the faith-based community, as this particular example is a church in my riding, with the ability to generate more revenue, which it was losing through other means, while, at the same time, making sure we can contribute to the well-being of young people in our riding by creating the spaces they need to experience quality child care.

I am not sure if I completely understand some of the arguments I have heard from colleagues of mine across the way. I come from a profession, as I have mentioned before, in education. This included working for a number of years in the northwest part of Winnipeg. This is a part of the city with large numbers of newcomers to Canada, large indigenous populations, large numbers of members of our community who are typically disenfranchised and who suffer as a result of a variety of barriers and obstacles, both historical and current, and challenges in accessing systems.

I think this is truly inspirational. I think this is truly beneficial. I think that, when we look back in the future at the investments the Government of Canada made and the laws we passed in relation to early childhood education in the country, they will be looked upon as some of the most important and most beneficial we have made in our history.

As I mentioned, when we see students by the time they get to middle school and high school, where I spent most of my time as an educator, the benefits of having access to early childhood education are very obvious. It is not only the benefits to the children that are of the utmost importance in the context of this conversation, but also what it does to the workforce.

We know that there has been a historic increase in the number of women who are participating in the workforce by virtue of the fact that they now have access in greater ways, with more opportunity, and more affordable opportunities, than they have had in the past. That has allowed for us to have more economic drivers, greater economic participation and more equity and equality across this country.

In conclusion to my remarks on this important and historic piece of legislation today, I want to note that one piece of criticism that seems to be coming from certain colleagues across the way is on the challenge of there being people who can afford child care, and this seems to be their preoccupation while, at the same time, we hear, day after day, criticisms about an affordability crisis in Canada. We are addressing that affordability crisis, of course, in a variety of different ways. One of the marquee ways in which we are addressing it is through ensuring that there is access to low-cost, quality child care in this country.

Ben Carr

$434,891.00