Legislative Assembly of Ontario

CHILDREN'S SERVICES

ONTARIO COALITION FOR BETTER CHILD CARE

CHILD CARE COUNCIL OF OTTAWA-CARLETON

NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR FAMILY RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

CONTENTS

Monday 17 June 1996

Children's services

Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care

Kelly Massaro-Joblin, northern region representative

Child Care Council of Ottawa-Carleton

Kathy Yach

National Foundation for Family Research and Education

Dr Mark Genuis, executive director

STANDING COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Chair / Président: Patten, Richard (Ottawa Centre / -Centre L)

Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Gerretsen, John (Kingston and The Islands / Kingston et Les Îles L)

*Ecker, Janet (Durham West / -Ouest PC)

Gerretsen, John (Kingston and The Islands / Kingston et Les Îles L)

*Gravelle, Michael (Port Arthur L)

*Johns, Helen (Huron PC)

Jordan, Leo (Lanark-Renfrew PC)

Kennedy, Gerard (York South / -Sud L)

Laughren, Floyd (Nickel Belt ND)

*Munro, Julia (Durham-York PC)

Newman, Dan (Scarborough Centre / -Centre PC)

*Patten, Richard (Ottawa Centre / -Centre L)

*Pettit, Trevor (Hamilton Mountain PC)

*Preston, Peter L. (Brant-Haldimand PC)

*Smith, Bruce (Middlesex PC)

Wildman, Bud (Algoma ND)

*In attendance / présents

Substitutions present / Membres remplaçants présents:

Bartolucci, Rick (Sudbury L) for Mr Gerretsen

Carroll, Jack (Chatham-Kent PC) for Mr Jordan

Froese, Tom (St Catharines-Brock PC) for Mr Pettit

Martin, Tony (Sault Ste Marie ND) for Mr Wildman

Pupatello, Sandra (Windsor-Sandwich) for Mr Kennedy

Clerk / Greffière: Lynn Mellor

Staff / Personnel: Ted Glenn, research officer, Legislative Research Service

The committee met at 1544 in room 151.

CHILDREN'S SERVICES

Consideration of the designated matter pursuant to standing order 125 relating to the impact of the Conservative government funding cuts on children and children's services in the province of Ontario.

ONTARIO COALITION FOR BETTER CHILD CARE

The Chair (Mr Richard Patten): I'd like to call our first witness this afternoon, Kelly Massaro-Joblin, a representative of the executive of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care. Welcome to our hearings. We have approximately half an hour. You can choose to divide up the time between your comments and questions from members or use the whole time as you see fit in terms of your presentation. Welcome and thank you for joining us.

Ms Kelly Massaro-Joblin: Thank you. The north has been traditionally underserviced in a lot of areas, especially child care services, although we have seen some expansion in child care services in the aboriginal community and the new schools initiative. Since then, however, steady improvements have fallen.

When Jobs Ontario child care subsidies were dropped, out of 212 spaces in the northwest 80 were rolled over to regular subsidized spots and 132 spaces were lost. Many families were forced to take their children out of licensed child care as they no longer qualified for subsidy. This also left many vacant spaces in licensed child care facilities and left programs running at a deficit as full-fee-paying parents were hard to attract due to the high cost of child care.

The waiting lists continue for subsidized child care and there are few, if any, child care programs that can accommodate them. This is not due to the fact that the child care facilities are full; it is due to the fact the child care programs have limited subsidized spaces. The two centres I work at have the licensed capacity to provide child care for 106 children. Out of that total, 25 spaces are subsidized spaces. This represents approximately 24% of the children using our services. This is typical in our area for non-profit, licensed child care programs.

The money for the new schools initiative being dropped has also hurt our area. One of the child care programs that started with this initiative and has facilities for it in a new school has no operating dollars to open the facility. This program has another child care facility in a brand-new school which is in a rural area and has been challenged with high rent costs, cleaning costs and keeping its spaces full due to the number of seasonal workers. They have been forced to make a choice to close one centre to have the operating dollars for the other centre. This has left the rural community without a child care facility due to the fact there are no operating dollars to keep it running. This centre was used for a variety of programs. It served as a resource centre for families, caregivers and people in the community. It is a shame to see a brand-new facility shut down.

There are also increasing problems with school-based child care facilities. The cost incurred by these programs due to the rent, custodial services and other related costs the school board is charging is outrageous. If a child care program wants to provide child care services in the summer, the rent can go as high as $4,000 per month. This has left programs no choice but to close the facilities during the summer months, leaving parents to look for alternative care for two months. It is not the child care programs that want to cause inconvenience, but they are forced to or they would need to charge astronomical fees which families could not afford.

The integrated programs in Thunder Bay have been continually attacked. There are approximately six integrated programs that exist and very long waiting lists for child care. There has been no expansion in this area for many years and it is a much-needed service.

The children I've had the privilege to work with who came into our care not able to communicate with those around them and then being able to interact with their peers are incredible. I remember one parent of an autistic child writing a long letter of appreciation to all the staff and in it saying, "Thank you for giving me back my child." This child was three years old and wasn't able to look at anyone or show any kind of acknowledgement. She's now six years old and is a very affectionate and loving child. She interacts with her peers and will be entering grade 1 in September. This is only one of many successful stories.

Child care programs act as an extended family. Not only do they positively influence a child's development and learning, but also they provide support and resources to parents. Many of our programs offer workshops and presentations to all parents to help them feel confident in their role as parents and give them specific help in areas they may be experiencing difficulty in.

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When there was talk of a voucher system replacing subsidized child care as we know it and the wage subsidy grant being cut, our community rallied 300 people to a local school gymnasium to look at the impact of these cuts and how we as a community could stop this from happening. Many parents, educators and concerned citizens brought forth their concerns. To make this rally happen, donations were sent in by families and child care programs to advertise the event, and other business people in the community donated things like the sound system we used for the evening.

The reality of higher fees to parents if further cuts were made led many parents to explain that they could not afford to work and would not jeopardize the quality care their children were receiving by putting them in unlicensed care. There were questions on society's priorities, and if we truly saw them as a priority, we would invest in them now and for the future. One parent explained that she enjoyed her life and job knowing that her child was well taken care of. The most important issue to all parents was their children's wellbeing. Another excellent statement by a parent was: "We seek out a lawyer for legal advice, we look for an accountant when we need financial advice or a doctor when we need medical attention. Why then should we seek out anything less than quality, licensed, non-profit child care for our children where there are trained early childhood educators to provide developmentally appropriate programs?"

In the northwest, non-profit child care centres depend on various types of subsidies from the provincial government, including wage subsidies, pay equity, program development dollars, capital funding for new projects and parent subsidies. So far, the government has eliminated all these supports with the exception of wage subsidies and parent subsidies. Now the government is proposing to even the playing field by giving government dollars to for-profit child care centres. We in the north feel that direct government funding, including wage enhancement grants and other grants and parent subsidies, should be directed to licensed, non-profit child care services. The provincial government has a responsibility to ensure that the investment of public funds is placed in child care practices that meet government standards for early childhood education.

We do not recommend government funding of unlicensed, unregulated child care, either directly or through assistance with parents' fees for unlicensed care. We support government funding for resource centres, which in turn provide support for parents and families, both unlicensed and licensed private home child care providers and other members of the community.

There needs to be a recognition on the government's part that Ontario families have changed. Child care services must be more accessible and affordable for all families. Targeting those most in need, either financially or otherwise, limits the program's ability to build a community of people naturally helping each other. Segregating services does not provide the natural role modelling and supports parents can provide to each other. Also, when staff become the only resource to high-needs families, the risk of staff burnout and high staff turnover jeopardizes the quality and viability of the service.

A system that targets all funding to the very poor will be more dependent on government funding and is expensive to operate. A more effective solution would be to provide assistance to families based on family income. A mix of full-fee, partially subsidized and fully subsidized families allows more users access and potentially lowers the cost to government for subsidies. If the subsidy dollars for one space were shared among five or six families who could afford the remaining fees, more non-government money would flow into the system.

We support a sliding fee scale based on family income. Governments have been able to create other sliding scales that could be used as a model for a sliding fee scale for child care. This type of system would encourage more people who can financially contribute to access licensed child care.

In concluding my presentation today, I urge you to review our vision and to listen to the families, early childhood educators and the children themselves to get the vision needed for a successful child care system. Thank you.

Mrs Sandra Pupatello (Windsor-Sandwich): Hi. Thanks for travelling down to visit with us. We had a great opportunity to speak when I was in Thunder Bay, and I appreciated that then as well. You have a very active community in the area of child care, which seems very required these days as well.

I wanted you to comment. I noted with interest your story of the autistic child. Tell me what you see as the greatest downfall when you cut child care in this way, in particular for children at risk. What is the outcome in terms of how much government money will be spent when you don't have early detection for children at risk?

Ms Massaro-Joblin: Early intervention is one of the most important parts of early childhood education. From research that I've read, they say a dollar spent in the early years is $7 saved in the years to come.

Mrs Pupatello: Potentially, what would have happened to that autistic child had she not entered a school and not had ECE?

Ms Massaro-Joblin: She might have had to stay in the segregated setting, as opposed to being integrated into her community school and needing less support and fewer resources as far as one on one with -- we call them SERTs, who are assistants to the teacher.

Mrs Pupatello: Would you say that the expense of government is then higher because you haven't intervened early by providing services?

Ms Massaro-Joblin: Definitely. There's a much lesser cost, because as the child gets older, then their needs will be met through the school system, which will then of course be a higher cost.

Mrs Pupatello: The government has offered, almost as an excuse, that most parents send their children to unregulated day care, so what's the big deal? What do you think the big deal is?

Ms Massaro-Joblin: I think, first of all, it's not a parent's choice to do that. From my experience working with parents, the only reason they choose unregulated child care is because they can't afford the price of licensed child care.

Mrs Pupatello: Are you thinking that unregulated care is terrible?

Ms Massaro-Joblin: In our area, it's not desired. Most people, if they had the choice, would choose licensed child care if subsidies were available to them. Right now, really the only people who qualify in our area are the very poor. Middle-income people would not qualify.

Mrs Pupatello: How do you address the argument that the government's put forward that the private sector in child care has been badly treated over the years and all of the changes made would take money from the non-profit and hand it over to the private, or whatever they're going to do, because they've been badly treated? Our argument to that has been that government money needs to be accountable and you need to have a hand on the outcome when you're spending government money, and you have much less of a hand when you turn government money over to private business.

That's really been the idea, that when you're dealing with children, we're far less interested in the bottom line than we are in high-quality child care. But that nevertheless has been the idea. The private sector has been badly treated, and so the review and revisit of all of these subsidies to non-profit the government really has seen as inappropriate. What would happen to the child care centres in your area when you start taking all of that funding? What happens to your staff, for example?

Ms Massaro-Joblin: We only have one for-profit centre in Thunder Bay and that is out of at least 15 to 20 centres. We are not in favour of for-profit, because of the accountability factor. With non-profit, as you mentioned, the parents participate on a board level, they make decisions around the care that's provided for their children, as well as where the money's spent. The money is not put into their pockets; it's put into the operations of the facilities to provide better care for the children.

Mrs Pupatello: The government has argued that you would only have one because the private sector has been so unfairly treated. What is happening to your staff in terms of high turnover etc because of the change? What does that do in terms of child care?

Ms Massaro-Joblin: First of all, the work environment would be different if we went to commercial centres. In our area, at the one commercial or for-profit centre that we have, the staff are paid less. There are no benefits. They have no sick days.

Mrs Pupatello: What does that mean to the children?

Ms Massaro-Joblin: The quality of work life would definitely affect how the staff interact with the children. They're doing minimal amounts of care and just custodial types of care.

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Mr Michael Gravelle (Port Arthur): Kelly, welcome. It's great that you were able to get down from Thunder Bay, and we're really glad to have your perspective. Certainly as my colleague Ms Pupatello pointed out, the child care community in our area is very strong and it certainly was a great display last fall in terms of our concern about the proposed voucher system that was being talked about.

I just want to ask you one quick thing. In terms of the child care review that my colleague across here, Ms Ecker, is working on, has northwestern Ontario had an opportunity and has Thunder Bay specifically had a chance to put their input to that committee?

Ms Massaro-Joblin: I believe there have been submissions sent in. We haven't actually met with Ms Ecker, but there have been submissions forwarded.

Mr Gravelle: You've got some great ideas. Thank you very much. It's good to have you here.

Ms Massaro-Joblin: Thank you.

Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): I want to echo the sentiments of my colleagues here that it is good that you've come down. It's good that we hear first hand from folks in northern Ontario re the impact that decisions that are being made by the present government are having on all of us who live and work in that part of this wonderful province.

You certainly in a very clear and concise manner lay out the situation as it is and some of the challenges that we face up there. I know that in my own community there are absolutely no for-profit day care facilities. They're all not-for-profit, and they actually function quite well, and a lot of people over the last few years have jumped in to make them even better because they're not-for-profit. There's a greater sense of ownership by the community in those facilities. A couple of them are in fact co-op, and we have no difficulty getting the parents to come and participate.

I also was interested in your reference to the integrated programs. I note that we have one of those. You say that you have approximately six integrated programs with very long waiting lists. We have one in Sault Ste Marie that's struggling right now because money has been pulled from the Community Living Algoma organization that sponsored that, so the parents actually have come to the rescue because they didn't want to lose it. They saw it as too valuable for them, for their children, so they have pooled their resources with the resources of Community Living Algoma to try and keep it going.

Maybe you could just for me, and perhaps for the benefit of the committee, talk a bit more about the integrated programs in Thunder Bay and the difficulty. You said they already had very long waiting lists. What's the situation now?

Ms Massaro-Joblin: They continue to do so. We have a newly founded group called Communities Together for Children and they're looking at a central referral waiting list for families with special-needs children. From that waiting list we would prioritize the needs of these children so we can accommodate them in more centres, meaning looking at more inclusive child care so that there aren't only six integrated centres, but all centres could accommodate children with high needs by offering what we call resource consultants who would work between centres and have a caseload of maybe five centres where they would offer support and resources to those programs. But we are running into a difficulty financially of setting this up because we don't have the funding to provide the support and resources if we're to expand what we presently have as far as integration.

Mr Martin: Ms Pupatello mentioned earlier that Ms Ecker is working on a new framework within which day care will be delivered in the province, and I know she will have some interest in the integrated portion of that, making sure that children who are challenged in particular ways in all the communities across the province will be facing -- or what opportunity they will have or not have.

A move to for-profit as opposed to not-for-profit re the whole question of integration and the needs of these special-needs kids: How do you think that's going to shake out?

Ms Massaro-Joblin: I think it'll work well. Staff training is very important, and if dollars aren't being spent for professional development -- a big chunk of most non-profit centres is to keep their staff well educated, well trained so they can deal with these situations. In my experience on a budget line, for-profit centres, in order to make a profit, have to cut somewhere and usually it's professional development.

Mrs Janet Ecker (Durham West): Thank you very much, Kelly, for coming down. I was indeed in Thunder Bay myself and got to visit many centres there and have certainly heard and received many submissions from organizations and individuals in the north. I would have liked to have gone to your community meeting that you had to assure the parents that many of the claims and rumours that were being circulated last year were not true. It was unfortunate, but the only people who were talking about vouchers seemed to be certain advocacy groups, joined by some members of the opposition. It certainly wasn't something the government was talking about doing.

Mrs Pupatello: It was your memo.

Mrs Ecker: No, it wasn't.

Mrs Pupatello: It was your document.

Mrs Ecker: No, it wasn't.

I've been a little concerned that some of the claims that have been made about how we were going to wipe out child care and turn it into vouchers or wipe out subsidies or do all this kind of thing are not accurate, and I have certainly been quite frustrated about the concern and angst that has been created within many parents.

One of the things that I just wanted to say too is that the misinformation that continues to be floating around a little bit causes me some concern. We haven't scrapped pay equity. We're not planning on segregating services. There's currently now money that's going to the for-profit sector and it is certainly not our intent to wipe out one sector versus another sector. We have talked about restoring equity in the system, and that does not mean we're trying to somehow privatize or anything of that kind. Parents choose profit or non-profit or regulated or unregulated or home- or centre-based for many reasons and, as you say, in some circumstances it may well be an availability of choices; in some circumstances it may be affordability.

One of the things that I have found quite interesting is how many advocates of regulated care have at certain times in their child's life chosen unregulated home care because they believe at that time it works, as well as I've seen parents pay more for unregulated home care in communities where they could have had regulated, licensed care for less money. I think it's very hard to make any kinds of generalizations about what parents are doing out there, which is one of the reasons why I've certainly supported parental choice. I'm supporting parental choice as much as we can through the structure and through the application of resources.

I was interested in your comment about the family income, because this is something I've certainly heard, that we need to make the subsidy system much more flexible and a better reflection of need. Have you given any thought to how that might work best and what kinds of family income? Are there other factors that perhaps should be factored in there, other than just strictly family income, that kind of thing, that might make the subsidy eligibility test better reflect the need of working individuals?

Ms Massaro-Joblin: In my submission I indicate how the group RSPs are presently done, looking at that type of a contribution towards child care. As far as what income level, I don't have those kinds of figures figured out, but I do support that. We need to involve more middle-income people and higher-income people into the licensed child care facilities so that, as I mentioned, less government dollars are being used to subsidize spaces.

Mr Jack Carroll (Chatham-Kent): A couple of questions, again on the sliding fee scale based on family income. You go on to say that, "This type of system would encourage more people who can financially contribute to access licensed child care." Are you basically saying that if you raise the price for people who can afford it, more of them will access it?

Ms Massaro-Joblin: No, that's not what I mean. What I mean is, we'd have a maximum. For instance, right now child care for a preschool child is $27. That would be the maximum for someone who could afford 100% --

Mr Carroll: That's five or six families splitting the subsidy. You talk about five or six families splitting the subsidy so the government didn't have to split it.

Ms Massaro-Joblin: For instance, if somebody could afford $25, then the government would pay $2, as opposed to $27. That's what I meant by that.

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Mr Carroll: I've got three grandchildren, and they're in unregulated child care because that's what my daughter chooses to put them into, as do most of her friends and most of the people I know. What is the hangup with unregulated child care? I don't understand that hangup.

Ms Massaro-Joblin: Just the word itself, "unregulated"; nobody's monitoring it. There are lots of things that we have to follow in the Day Nurseries Act, and with unregulated care that doesn't happen; there's nobody watching over them.

Mr Carroll: So if the government isn't watching it, it's necessarily not good. Is that what you're saying?

Ms Massaro-Joblin: No, but for instance one thing around the ratio issue -- these people can have 13 children in their house at one time.

Mrs Ecker: It's against the law. No, they can't.

Ms Massaro-Joblin: Well, in our area it still happens.

Mrs Ecker: Have you reported that to the ministry?

Ms Massaro-Joblin: We have been reporting, yes.

Mrs Ecker: If it hasn't been followed up, Mr Chair, I would like --

Ms Massaro-Joblin: Excuse me, Janet, but there are a lot of people we don't catch either.

Mrs Ecker: It's against the law.

Mr Rick Bartolucci (Sudbury): On a point of order, Mr Chair: I don't think the witness should be attacked like this. I think she deserves an apology. She was given a story by Ms Ecker and all of a sudden she's attacked by Ms Ecker. I would suggest that she deserves --

Mrs Ecker: Ms Ecker did not attack her. Ms Ecker said that what she was saying was against the law.

Mr Bartolucci: You verbally attacked her. You were very rude to her.

Mrs Ecker: This is an organization that knows the law very well, Mr Bartolucci.

The Chair: Excuse me, Mr Carroll has the floor. You have 30 seconds.

Mr Bartolucci: This is absolute ignorance. It's unbelievable.

Mrs Pupatello: Tell them how many inspectors there are in the north.

Ms Massaro-Joblin: We only have one for the whole northwest, just to let you know that -- just one.

Mrs Pupatello: One inspector.

Mr Carroll: I understand what you're saying about the sliding scale thing. If that would work, if you would have people with money subsidizing people who don't have enough money, then why can't you just --

Ms Massaro-Joblin: It's making it more affordable for everyone, so people with three children would send their children to licensed child care.

Mr Carroll: Why wouldn't you just put that program into effect without the government? Why can't you just say to people with money, "Look, you come and help us pay for the people without money"? Why do you need the government involved in that?

Ms Massaro-Joblin: For one thing, not everybody who has money uses licensed child care. They might not even have children. We can't depend on that.

The Chair: Ms Massaro-Joblin, thank you very much for coming all this way. It was obviously a stimulating and very thoughtful presentation.

CHILD CARE COUNCIL OF OTTAWA-CARLETON

The Chair: The next witness is Ms Kathy Yach from the Child Care Council of Ottawa-Carleton, from a wonderful area of the province. We welcome you today, Kathy.

Ms Kathy Yach: As new members of the standing committee on social development, I applaud your encouragement of open and direct communication with the Ottawa-Carleton child care community as you gather information to make recommendations that will affect all children in the province of Ontario in the future. I urge you to listen to those of us who deliver programs and their effects on young children.

The child care council membership consists of 45 voting members from a variety of organizations, including day care, private home care, resource centres, special-needs programs, independent caregivers, private operators, recreation, school boards, colleges, unions and universities. On behalf of children and families, the child care council is mandated to provide a structure to promote collaboration and responsibility for the development and delivery of high-quality child care services in Ottawa-Carleton. Within the mission and guiding principles established for it, the child care council will provide the opportunity for a collective voice to be an advisory to the funders and political process in carrying out their mandates.

Child care services have been available in the Ottawa-Carleton area for over 50 years, with approximately 180 programs across the region and a mandate to serve approximately 7,200 subsidized children. I want to draw to your attention the fact that, as you know, the Ottawa Board of Education was a forerunner in the Ottawa-Carleton region for the establishment of day cares and after-4 programs in schools. They were also instrumental in lobbying the previous government to change the legislation that enabled this to happen.

We strongly support child care centres in schools and we're very disappointed that this government failed to have the wisdom to keep child care centres mandatory in schools. Several years ago, provincial direction and extensive community preschool review of services for children identified the need to develop centralized support services to facilitate the successful integration of handicapped children in the licensed care system. The mandate was given to Andrew Fleck Child Care Services. The vision of the community was to develop support services that are flexible and responsive to the changing needs of children, parents and the child care community. The move to access licensed child care in the Ottawa-Carleton region has been parent-driven and fully embraced by the child care system. To date, over 181 children who have special needs have been supported in 107 licensed child care programs in Ottawa-Carleton.

The child care council recommends that you maintain the necessary funds for this support program. It is critical for children, their families and the community so that the focus continues to be on the potential versus the disabilities of children. Children are integrated into the neighbourhood child care centre from the start so that all children can learn and develop together.

Research on early schooling indicates that those who start younger in quality preschool programs tend to perform better in later years, particularly in the measures of general ability, language and cognitive development, as well as reading and math performance. As community leaders tasked with helping to form the leaders of tomorrow, we must be mindful of this window of opportunity to help these children to be the best they can.

Since the 1960s, many research projects addressed the short- and long-term benefits of early childhood education. Some of these projects, such as the High/Scope Perry Preschool Study, have been under continuous scientific study for almost 30 years. This study, which gave preschool enrichment to high-risk children, proved that with early intervention employment was twice as good; high school completion was one-third higher; teenage pregnancies and crime were reduced by 40%; and drug use was substantially less. A dollar spent today saves $7 on social services in future years.

No government or society should choose to be penny wise today to become pound foolish tomorrow. Since the recent rate reduction in social welfare payments to clients, there is a false illusion of an improved society. It takes no more than a glance at almost any daily newspaper to see the harsh reality of these cuts. There has been a reduction in caseloads for welfare workers in our society, but the reduction has been most devastating for single people in our society. Families are still on welfare and there's been an increase in school breakfast programs, food banks and the number of people who are no longer able to pay the rent and have been evicted.

Many parents in low-income families, indeed those parents in better economic situations, would prefer to stay at home, but economic necessity forces them to work. Affordable quality child care supports parents by reducing stress, breaking the welfare cycle and enabling work, training and education for parents.

This preventive measure also reduces the long-term costs of supporting individuals who have been helped to reach their fullest potential. "If a family with one child is on social assistance rather than in child care, it will cost an additional $91,000 to our society because the mother on social assistance is not able to work and therefore not contributing to our economy." If fees are too high for the fee-paying parents, they are unable to work. Therefore, we strongly urge you to continue to fund child care so that parents can help themselves to break the poverty cycle.

The Liberal government promised in its red book to spend, when elected, $720 million to create 150,000 child care spaces by 1998. The province would have had to match these funds. In December 1995, Lloyd Axworthy pledged $630 million to expand and improve day care spaces; it didn't happen. Last week, Doug Young, the Minister of Human Resources, announced: "The money offered in December is gone. That's been gone since the proposal didn't fly." This is a breach of trust. The federal government must be made accountable for its promises. Children are our most important resource and must not be put at risk. Any government that opts to do so puts the future prosperity, growth and success of this community at grave risk.

I urge you at the next first ministers' conference to request the federal government to deliver its promise. The implications to our children and our whole society will be irreversible and will have a negative impact.

During the past year, the child care council has been very active with our local regional government in finding solutions to the issue of Jobs Ontario spaces. Participants in this group of community leaders strongly believe that if we lose the Jobs Ontario spaces, our system will slowly erode. The majority of families using the Jobs Ontario spaces are single-parent and low-income families trying desperately to get off FBA or welfare assistance. Also, many of the Jobs Ontario spaces were being used in day care programs in high schools and colleges, and these programs would be in jeopardy.

To maintain the Jobs Ontario spaces, the child care council supported a cut of 2.1% to each licensed program in the year 1996 and further agreed to work together with the region to find alternative solutions for the years in the near future.

The child care council then initiated a process to give long-term options to the province and the region which would address the provincial government's goals and ensure continued existence of a regulated, high-quality child care system. The options also addressed the need to make changes in the existing system to ensure that quality child care options can be afforded by both parents and taxpayers. Day care and private home care distributed a questionnaire seeking alternative suggestions to expand services to children and families. Workdays were held to establish principles in each group and then applied to the resulting suggestions. These were then sent to Janet Ecker, MPP, who is heading up the child care review. They're attached to your appendix.

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Because we have been so successful in working together with our local regional government, we would like to urge the provincial government to allow us to continue to work cooperatively to find local solutions. If funding is to be cut, please block-fund to our local government so that we can find the solutions together.

If the government's intent is to re-engineer programs and services to build a better tomorrow, the licensed group care, private home care and integrated programs are, by definition, an essential part of these plans. We believe strongly that there must be minimum standards in place and these must be enforced by the local ministry office to ensure the quality and safety of children. As advocates and taxpayers, we are very concerned that programs for children be open and accountable.

There is no room for compromise. There is no room for the foolish error of failing to provide sound programs to the future leaders and taxpayers of Ontario.

We support early childhood educators staffing child care centres. We are concerned about the implications to children of allowing JK to be optional. It is an error that will return to haunt our province socially and financially in the years ahead. Instead of cutting JK, you should have considered making it possible to hire early childhood educators to replace teachers. There would have been cost savings to the boards of education.

Wage enhancement, available since 1987, has played a role in attracting and maintaining qualified staff to work with children. The wage enhancement represents up to 20% of early childhood educators' salaries. We recommend the allocation of funds for wage enhancement be forwarded to our local regional government so that we can work together to find appropriate distribution of funds.

The early years are the most important. For members of the standing committee on social development interested in pursuing more in-depth study of the effects of early childhood, I urge you to read Dr Fraser Mustard and Dr Paul Steinhauser's papers. These leading Ontario researchers clearly demonstrate the need to safeguard the quality in early years.

Children are our future. We must develop them to their potential. Please support programs that will enable this to happen.

Mr Martin: Thank you for coming forward and presenting today. You certainly are consistent with anybody I've spoken to and anybody I've heard from -- not just during the tenure of this government and as we took some of the legislation we have in the last few months around the province -- who say and who quantify with study and research the need for us to protect what we already have in the area of early childhood education and build on it, grow it and make it more accessible. The other thing that we hear loudly and clearly as we go along is the need to make the transition from day care to school as seamless as possible as well and to work in that direction.

I keep hearing, particularly from the government, in the past less than a year, that somehow that's not valuable any more, that that approach is suspect and that there's another way. You've mentioned a couple of people in here, Mustard and Steinhauser, who clearly demonstrate the need to safeguard the quality. The Royal Commission on Learning made reference to that. Who's saying otherwise? Who out there of any stature, with any credibility in the field, is saying that we should be doing something different that you're aware of?

Ms Yach: No one I know of.

Mr Martin: There's nobody out there. What about this fellow who's coming before us at 4:30 today -- maybe his name says it all, I'm not sure -- Mark Genius?

Ms Yach: I don't know him.

Mr Martin: Do you know anything about him? Why is it that all of a sudden he is becoming the person who knows it all, who has all the answers, who knows better than the folks --

The Chair: Mr Martin, we will be hearing from him. He will be the subsequent speaker.

Mr Martin: I wanted her view, though, of this person who --

The Chair: She says she doesn't know him.

Mr Martin: You don't know him and you're not able to comment at all on his credentials? Do you know of his approach? Do you know that the government is putting a lot of faith and belief in what he has to offer and the views he's presenting?

Ms Yach: No, Mr Martin, but we were fortunate enough to have a round table with Janet Ecker in Ottawa, and she visited a number of programs. My main emphasis with all of you is to educate you, and hopefully in the end you'll make the right decisions. That's really what we're here for today. I don't want to comment on somebody else because I really don't know who they are. I don't know what they represent.

Mr Martin: Who belongs to the Child Care Council of Ottawa-Carleton? Who's part of that?

Ms Yach: If you look at the back, there's their winter newsletter and all the organizations are listed.

Mr Martin: Almost anybody who has an interest in --

Ms Yach: They're elected from their organization, though, Mr Martin.

Mr Martin: Yes, but almost every organization that has an interest in, that has a concern about, that wants the support --

Ms Yach: It's the largest representation of the early childhood education field in Ottawa, and we advise the regional government.

Mr Martin: They're supporting your brief today, all those people?

Ms Yach: I'm representing them.

Mrs Ecker: Thank you very much, Kathy, for coming down. I'm very pleased to see you again. As has been mentioned, I had an opportunity to not only have a round table meeting in Ottawa with a very strong child care community but also to see many of the actual facilities up in Ottawa, and much appreciate the work that's gone into the submission and the brief that has come forward.

One thing I would like to stress, since Mr Martin does not seem to be aware of it, is that the child care review has been trying very hard to meet with all the people in the child care field who have expertise and knowledge and to assess and sift and use the advice and the expertise that's been brought forward to us, because it is a field where there is a diversity of opinion among parents, among child care educators, among providers out there in the field and among the research community. I think that's why we've been so clear about setting out the objectives we're trying to achieve with the review.

I think it's fair to mention too that the experience I had in Ottawa is one of the reasons why I personally have been very favourable to continued and enhanced municipal involvement in child care delivery and administration in the province. Many municipalities, Ottawa being one, certainly have demonstrated that they're quite prepared to make some tough choices, as they balance their priorities, to make sure that child care stays as a high priority.

There's one question I would like to ask you about, because you made an interesting suggestion on junior kindergarten, about using more early childhood educators within schools. I know this is something some school boards have tried to do. Some early childhood educator groups are certainly quite interested in trying to do that, and I know there's a lot more integration going on between kindergarten and child care which seems to be working very well. When I put that question to some teachers' federations that were at some other hearings we had, they reacted extremely negatively and said they weren't qualified and couldn't handle it, and "Don't you know they're only allowed to have so many kids in a day care centre; they couldn't possibly handle a classroom setting." Any comments on how we deal with that response from the teacher union leadership?

Ms Yach: Just to clarify something, in my old life I used to be a trustee on the Ottawa board and I was chair for two years, so I come from a background of knowing both sides. When I went on the Ottawa board 13 or 14 years ago I ran on the issue of child care, wanting it in schools, and felt very strongly that JK-SK should have ECE teaching. I can give you a whole gamut that's recorded in the minutes of me asking what type of equipment they had in the schools, in JK-SK, really realizing that there was no emphasis put on JK-SK, not in the school boards and not in the universities. If you went to Queen's University or any university, they were not doing that.

I'm not taking away from the teachers in the classroom, but what disturbed me in the last year was to see the government looking at getting rid of JK or making it optional to boards and realizing that boards of education are in a financial crunch, like all of us, and there are other ways of delivering service. In fact, I spoke to the chair of the Ottawa board, Linda Hunter, and said to her, "You should be looking at a pilot of having ECE do it."

I realize there are negotiations and that there's a lot of opposition to it, and I appreciate where the teachers' federations are coming from, but I could go back 10 or 15 years ago, where in fact they were thinking of ECE as teachers' aides. I think if you looked at it, you'll find there are many teachers in boards of education who may not even have as much training as ECE, because many of them went to normal school and for whatever reason never took their degree and were grandfathered and they don't have it. I used to fight this on floor of the Ottawa board. If you gave the direction to the community colleges, I think it could be done.

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Mrs Pupatello: Thanks for coming down today. I too had an opportunity to see a number of programs in Ottawa. You tend to be leaders in a number of areas and find ways to make programs stay, especially in inner-city areas where they're really required.

Tell me what you think of the current discussion on disentanglement and what that has to do with the child care study. Does it throw all of the study on child care up in the air until the government decides who is delivering what service in each community?

Ms Yach: That's a good question. I don't know, Sandra. I feel like we've been studied to death sometimes.

Mrs Pupatello: I agree with you.

Ms Yach: I don't mean that negatively. I think sometimes we have to go through reviews. I just wonder where it will all end.

Mrs Pupatello: It's surprising that it would take months and months to review when we kind of know a system.

Ms Yach: As far as the day care review, I think we were pleased that Janet gave us time, that we were all able to respond, and we all wanted to respond.

Mrs Pupatello: You know the outcome has been delayed again?

Ms Yach: I didn't know that; I'm sorry.

Mrs Ecker: It has? That's interesting?

Mrs Pupatello: Tell me something: Are you aware that some school systems in Ontario have ECEs in the JK program?

Ms Yach: Yes. That's with a minister's letter, right?

Mrs Pupatello: We have a teacher, for example, in Windsor who works with ECEs in the same classroom.

Ms Yach: My recommendation would be that the ECE be the teachers.

Mrs Pupatello: I'm just suggesting there are school boards that have already come a great way to reduce costs and still be allowed the option of maintaining JK where possible.

Ms Yach: If I were to look in our own centre, we have staff on site who have their early childhood degree from Ryerson and have their ECE from colleges, so there are many ECE people who have degrees. I think there's been a barrier of trying to understand that.

Mrs Pupatello: You see that it's quite negative in terms of going backwards and not allowing JK to come into full force. Before even the last term of government mandated JK to be phased in over a period of time as a requirement, something like 80% of boards were moving towards introducing JK because they all saw the validity of it, and at that time they weren't being forced; so even when they were being forced they were moving towards it anyway because they recognized how valuable it was as a service to children.

You were here during the last presentation. Tell me what you see as the greatest negative effect of not having early detection for children at risk when you don't make the space available for children to get into a system to be identified.

Ms Yach: I'm going to speak personally here. I'm a good friend of David Weikert, who did the Perry preschool study, and years ago I spent down in Ypsilanti, Michigan. It interests me because as time has progressed, his input has determined that we really don't know the long-term effects. When he first started this study he thought he would just raise the IQ. That went by the wayside and eventually he realized that he changed the children's lives and their directions.

I can remember being down there a couple of years ago and his comment was, as they had been studying them, the impact of them as parents was great, which was something they never thought of when they started the study. I think that we don't know. I can give you my personal feelings but I think the impact is long-term. It's a long-term in teenage pregnancies; it's long-term in drug abuse. I just wish we had studies in Ontario like what's happened in Ypsilanti. I wish we had tracked kids for 35 years.

Mrs Pupatello: Yes. It's been quoted so extensively that it really does have a big difference. When the government has an economic agenda like the one it has, it tends to lose sight of the outcome of cutting areas like early childhood detection for children at risk. Specifically, how do you answer a government that says it has an economic agenda and it's going to cut areas that clearly will help children, particularly those with special needs like the autistic child we heard reference to earlier, that it will cost the government more not to intervene at an earlier date?

Ms Yach: Sandra, as I said earlier, I'm here to educate and to ask people to look at studies and to make decisions. You had asked the earlier presenter on unregulated. Well, part of our child care council is; we have people who come from the unregulated sector and we're trying to find solutions together.

The Chair: Thank you very much for coming all this way from the Ottawa area. We appreciate your presentation and look forward to seeing you at home.

NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR FAMILY RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

The Chair: The National Foundation for Family Research and Education; Mr Genuis, would you join us. I gather you've come a long way.

Dr Mark Genuis: Yes, sir, I have.

The Chair: Welcome to our committee hearing. We have up to half an hour. You can break up the time with your presentation and time for members' questions as you see fit.

Dr Genuis: Thank you for having me here today. My name is Dr Mark Genuis. There must be a misspelling on Mr Martin's form.

I'm the founder and executive director of the National Foundation for Family Research and Education. My objective today will be to speak for approximately 10 minutes. You've likely had a long day, and I will try to keep my comments brief and to the point and then open up the floor for as many questions as possible.

Just a little bit about our organization, seeing that it seems we're not very well known: We are an organization that is charitable but otherwise private. We have the sole goal of studying and supporting families in Canada, which means that we conduct and gather academic research throughout the world on specific issues regarding families, then we take that information and disseminate it. Instead of disseminating it solely within the academic community, we try to bring it to communities and individuals, to corporations where appropriate and where they request it and to governments where appropriate and where it's requested.

That is what brings me here today and that's a bit about us. We have a board of directors that spans right now from Toronto to Alberta. We have an academic advisory council that critiques everything we do through a blind peer review process. This advisory council spans four countries, from Cape Breton to Vancouver in Canada and three other countries around the world. We're now speaking with people in two other countries. There's a very strict adherence to the academic component so as to bring you information that is comprehensive, sophisticated and on the cutting edge. I appreciate your time.

I will first address a statement from Mr Martin and then get into the information, which I'll break up into a few different parts. Mr Martin said that anybody who has an interest in the child care area is saying one thing, and it should be noted that NFFRE has absolutely no interest in the child care area. We do not stand to benefit or fall down on your cuts or anyone else's cuts. If you put money into child care or go any route, we do not stand to gain or benefit from any of this. This is us coming to you strictly as a neutral party sharing the latest, most comprehensive research information with you, and that is it.

First of all I'd like to begin with some trends. Statistics Canada tells us that the suicide rate for Ontario children over the past 40 years has increased by 434%. The numbers are not huge from one to nine, but our question would be, when do we begin paying attention to the trends? In the teens the rate has gone up 256%, and this is after a population increase is factored in, so it has nothing to do with population rises. As you heard I believe on December 11 or 12, Canada is now third for youth suicide rates in the industrialized world. For adults, the rate has gone up 89%.

Youth violent crime in Canada has gone up in the past 10 years by 124%. This is violent crime only, and that approximately doubles the rate of adult violent crime. Drug-related crime in Canada has gone up 83% in the past few years and recidivism has stayed steady at about 45%. What's fascinating about that number is that 60% of those recidivists, or repeat offenders, had three or more prior convictions. What does that tell us? That tells us that after children reach a certain level, and I say this humbly as a counselling psychologist, we are not extremely effective in getting to them. If we can prevent some of these things, we'd be far ahead of the game.

Canadian business -- I just met with a businessman here in Toronto -- now spends approximately $12 billion a year on personal and stress leave. Some of it may be, but not all of it is just because of stress on the job. My point is, when we see some of these consistent trends in various areas of life, it is incumbent upon us, it's essential for us to begin looking at solutions to prevent these difficulties from occurring in the first place.

I think that most of the people coming to you are trying to focus on that same direction, but I'm going to discuss the research information with you with that focus of preventing: What is best for these young children? And I'm going to focus on the question of the impact of removing 14,000 child care spaces from the province of Ontario.

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The first area of research that I'll address is that of attachment, or bonding. Quickly, what a bond is to a child is the security that a child feels with her or his parents. It's the likelihood that a child, when in need, will retreat to her or his parents and then feel taken care of and safe and secure.

There's been a tremendous amount of research in this area over the past 40 or 50 years. I was fortunate enough to conduct a study on this and publish it in 1994. It served as my doctoral dissertation, but parts of it have been published internationally, parts have been presented at the Canadian Psychological Association national conference in 1994, and there have been other publications since that time.

What does this information tell us? This information tells us that a secure childhood bond or attachment to parents is a direct and important, in fact central, element in developing healthy, happy and productive adolescents. Insecure bonds to parents, however, are a direct and some would argue causal influence on the production of clinical levels of emotional problems, behavioural problems, illnesses, and including youth crime, in adolescence. There doesn't seem to be a whole tremendous amount of grey area. When the bond is secure, a direct line to health, happiness and productivity; when it's insecure, a direct line to difficulties.

So we have to ask ourselves, how does this bond develop? What helps this bond develop securely and what helps it develop insecurely? In this area we reach what has up till now been a very controversial area of research. Not surprisingly, we and others have found that various child abuses contain within them a risk. Neglect contains within it a risk. Lack of parental involvement in children's lives contains within it a risk. One other area, though, that has been found recently is regular non-parental care.

Before I get into explaining that finding, I want to tell you a little bit about research design. You will no doubt have heard many individual studies discussed. You will no doubt have heard many literature or narrative reviews being discussed. These have traditionally been very, very important in the social sciences because that's all that we've had. The difficulty is that narrative reviews are inherently biased, particularly in contentious areas. Regardless of what my bias is or how hard the researcher tries, their bias is going to come out in doing a narrative review.

Various scientists throughout the past 20 years have come up with a technique and developed and validated a technique we call meta-analysis. Meta-cognition is thinking about thinking; meta-analysis is analysis of analysis. It's a method of removing the researcher's bias. It's a method of taking the information in a particular area, standardizing it and examining it without the bias of the researcher. The result, quite frankly, is that a meta-analysis is more powerful and more valid than any individual study, than any group of studies and any literature review in any area of study.

Medicine now is heavily reliant on the use of meta-analysis in looking at the validity of techniques and so forth to see what really works. It is an increasingly well used area of research.

What are the results? We also, in the area of non-parental care, are fortunate in psychology to have three such meta-analyses conducted. Not one; we have three done. Before I go into them, though, I'd just like to take a second and tell you about some limitations. We should always understand that no science is perfect and that there are some limitations to the information.

The first one is that a large percentage of the participants studied throughout the world in the area of non-parental care are those within the mid-socioeconomic range. All ranges have been studied, without question, but a large percentage and disproportionate percentage has been in the middle range.

Secondly, the majority, about 70%, of the studies have not directly focused on quality of care. Again, 30% have. We do have information on this area, but not every study has. So what I'll present to you is the information we have to date, the best information available today.

Thirdly, we have what we call a "file drawer" problem where we have studies with findings that are not significant or not dramatic not getting published, and that's a concern that some people say exists. But within meta-analysis we can do a calculation that tells us how many other studies we'd have to do to call the current results into question. For example, for the most comprehensive analysis that's been done in this area, we'd need to do another 150 studies to call the current results into question. So the current results are rather strong when you look at it that way.

The fourth area is what's called an apples/oranges problem. If you read a story in the Globe and Mail recently, someone addressed meta-analysis and said, well, it's a study but it really falls apart when you consider that they include studies with different questionnaires; they include studies that are not exactly the same. But in fact this is one of the greatest positives and pluses of meta-analysis, one of its greatest strengths, because in research we have a thing called validity. When you have various studies all pointing to the same end and finding the same results, you have increased validity. So this apples/oranges problem, as we call it, is actually a great strength in meta-analysis.

If you have any questions about that, I'd be happy, but at the risk of boring you with more information on methodology, I'll move on.

The findings in the area have consistently been that regular non-parental care of more than 20 hours a week posed a significant risk to children in their development. That's prior to the age of five, more than 20 hours a week, and on a regular basis.

What are the areas of risk?

Number one, in a substantial form, a risk to the bonding between child and parents. In other words, it increases the risk of these children forming insecure bonds to their parents. Are all children going to form insecure bonds? No, but it increases the risk substantially. Number two is in the area of social-emotional development, and number three is in the area of behavioural development. Cognitive development demonstrated no real significant differences. The most important one, as we see it, is this issue of bonding and attachment, for the reasons I spoke of earlier.

Furthermore, looking at issues such as quality, family structure, socioeconomic status, do these potential confounds or mediating variables have a substantial influence on the outcome? A, B, C -- none of them had a substantial influence. What we found is this information pointed back to parents doing a good job with their children. We found the parental care consistently outperforms non-parental care for these young children. Regardless of whether the mother is single or married or living with someone, she generally does a better job than the people who are not caring. Now, there are many high-quality non-parental care institutions, but children seem to form more secure attachment with their parents when they're cared for by their parents on a full-time, regular basis prior to the age of five.

The last area I'd like to address is a study you may have heard about, and if not, I'm sure that you will. It was broadcast widely throughout the press. It was a study by the National Institute for Child Development and Health, I believe it was, in the United States, a large study. They just came out with the results of it, saying that trust in mothers -- they specifically looked at mothers -- is not influenced by extensive non-maternal care.

There are a couple of things I'd like to tell you about that study very briefly. Please know that in that study they also found that when mothers were insensitive to their children and they separated those children from their mothers who were insensitive for 10 hours a week, these children were substantially more likely to form insecure attachments. That's a much more conservative figure than I presented to you today and that's what they reported, but that did not get much media attention. That's one.

Two, you should also realize that in that study, and I have it here if you would like to look at it, they counted fathers as day cares. A substantial portion of the children in care other than the mother's were in the father's care. So it absolutely confounded and confused the results.

They also did a few other things, like they didn't validate some of their instruments, so their measure for maternal sensitivity had no basis, no validity at all. The way they broke up their times into zero to 10, 10 to 30, 30 or more has absolutely no precedent in research. All the findings have 20 or more or 20 or less and they say that in their introduction, yet they went ahead and broke things up and it just confounded and confused the results. So the study is really very, very concerning.

Again, remember, even if one were to attend to the results, it's one study that adds to a list of about 100 existing published works. It is one study. It is nowhere near the power of a meta-analysis bringing together all of the information in this important field.

What would we recommend? We would recommend that the government consider working in conjunction with other initiatives that are going on across the country. At the federal level, for example, there is a motion right now before the House, motion 30, calling for caregiver tax credits. These tax credits would go to people who are providing care in their home for young children, for disabled and for elderly people. What this would do is recognize the substantial benefit and contribution these people make and give them the respect and dignity they deserve. This is a motion, it's not a bill, but has been deemed votable by the private members' committee and will be voted on in October 1996, it's my understanding.

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There is also a bill that has had first reading and is in the drum, and that is Bill C-240. Bill C-240 is calling for the conversion of the child care expense deduction to a tax credit for families. What does that do? That gives all families a tax credit, specifically for families with children under five years of age. If you have these children, you have responsibilities, you have expenses, so you get a tax credit. Our system recognizes that. Then the families have some more money left in their pockets and they can choose to take that money and focus their time on the care and management of their family, or they can use non-parental care. It's their money. They keep their money and they can do with it whichever they like.

Is it everything? No, it's not a be-all and end-all, but it is a first step that appears to be consistent with the information. In fact, regardless of all of the data, 70% -- again coming back to mothers -- in 1991 responded to a Decima Research poll saying that if they had the economic strength and opportunity, they would focus their full-time work on the care and management of their family. Also, in excess of 70% of the population in 1994, including 70% of single-parent families, responded to a national poll by Angus Reid and said: "We, as families, should be solely responsible. We should be primarily responsible for the child care of our children. The government should not have that responsibility." So that's Canadians speaking. Regardless of any of that, the data are clear.

I'll close off my brief there. You have information in front of you.

The last thing is that we also would recommend a primary prevention program. Margaret Wente spoke about a woman in Toronto who is a psychologist who has a background in attachment doing some fantastic work in the city with parents who are at high risk and who are generally immigrant, low socioeconomic status, high-risk people. That doesn't bring the two together. There are many excellent parents who are low socioeconomic status. But apparently she's doing some wonderful work. That's a private initiative.

We are also proposing an initiative that will start at our head office in Calgary but hopefully expand across the country, and we call that Great Beginnings. It's a program aimed at new and expecting parents to say: "Look, folks. We always hear that people want this information 20 years ago. You can now have it 20 years ago. Here it is. You have the choice. Here's some information. Chew on it. Ask questions. Debate it. Personalize it. If it can be of help to you, we'd be very pleased." That's just an example of another private sector initiative that is meeting with some substantial interest from foundations and corporations across the country who are considering supporting it. We're not coming to you asking you for money. We're not interested in your money. But I just thought you should be aware of the issue. Thank you kindly.

Mr Carroll: Thank you very much, Doctor. I thought only us old guys believed in the fact that children are best raised by their parents. It's nice to hear there is some body of evidence which suggests what I firmly believe, that the toughest job in the world is being a --

Mrs Pupatello: What he said is mothers.

Dr Genuis: No, I didn't say mothers; I said parents.

Mr Carroll: The toughest --

Dr Genuis: No, okay. I'll explain that in a moment. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Mr Carroll: I would love to get through one of these without a lot of interruptions, please.

So it's heartening to hear there is some evidence that supports that and we should put our emphasis in that area. Everybody I have run into who is a proponent of regulated day care quotes the same Perry preschool study and talks about reductions of 40% in teenage pregnancies and drug use and talks about $7 spent today saves us $7 in the future. They use this study to say that's why we should have regulated day care.

As a researcher who obviously has been into this, could you comment on the validity of this study? It seems to be totally opposed to what your studies have shown.

Dr Genuis: It's not opposed to it at all. In fact, what you'll find, and as the person presenting before me discussed about high-risk families, high-risk children -- you must realize that not every family in our society is high risk. For those who are at that extreme end of the scale, a researcher named Yoshikawa in New York conducted a review of the literature in the area. What Yoshikawa found was that these intervention programs aimed at helping families directly who were at very high risk made a positive difference. But they were focused solely and entirely on families of high risk. I would caution the government that programs that are supposed to help high-risk families, when they're spread out across the board, do not help optimally high-risk families because you are targeting everyone who doesn't need it.

Through systems such as tax credits and so forth, if you can take care, in a sense, of the majority, then you can focus on that minority of families, that minority of society, establish a tight net so you can support them, and programs such as Perry preschool. There are other ones, there are many others, that have been found to be helpful; that's fine. But again, understand who you're dealing with. The information I've presented to you covers the whole spectrum of society. Perry preschool focused more so on the high-risk element of society. Not everyone is in that category.

Mr Carroll: What's interesting to me is that you're the first person that's indicated that this Perry preschool study did focus on children who are more at risk than just an average spectrum of children.

Dr Genuis: In fact, the person before me said the same thing.

Mr Carroll: So you recommend basically that child care is best provided by parents as opposed to any kind of non-parental?

Dr Genuis: I wouldn't recommend that, sir; the data recommend it. That's not "a" body of evidence, that's "the" body of evidence. The research from all over the world for the past 40 years consistently demonstrates that parents are capable and they do a good job. A minority of parents have various tremendous stresses in their lives and require assistance and support; absolutely. But, by and large, parental care consistently, and substantially in some cases, outperforms non-parental care.

Mrs Pupatello: Thank you for coming today. You said at the outset that you didn't want to draw conclusions, you just want to present information, but at the end you are advocating, for example, the family tax credit, so you are making some recommendation. Ideally then, children should be raised by both parents, with both parents staying home; do you feel that way?

Dr Genuis: No. There's been no body of research looking specifically at that question, so I can't comment on it. What we can look at, though, to get into that area -- and I'll try to be brief because I understand the time limitation and I apologize -- there are two things.

Mrs Pupatello: Could you speak to the mother staying home?

Dr Genuis: Okay, the two things, and the mothers; yes.

Mrs Pupatello: No, just the mother, if you don't mind.

Dr Genuis: The mother and the two parents; okay. First of all, we're not proposing a tax credit. The tax credit was proposed by Mr Paul Szabo of Mississauga South. What we're saying is, that is an example of a government initiative that is consistent with the information. We're not a lobby group, we're just an education organization, and that's one idea that's come to us. That's one example. I just wanted to share it because we've been accused of --

Mrs Pupatello: Can I ask you a question about a part -- this is page 4 of your report -- "It should be noted...50% of children in the regular non-parental care category did demonstrate secure bonds," so that means 50% didn't. That whole paragraph, "unmistakably negative effect in three of the four main areas," that's when it was compared to those children in regular non-parental care for more than 20 hours per week. Since the majority of non-parental care is in unregulated child care, one could look at your findings and derive that unregulated care then has unmistakable negative effects on children.

Dr Genuis: An excellent question, and that will make four that I'll answer. No, you can't do that because both regulated and non-regulated care were included, and there's a substantial amount of regulated care that has been assessed. In fact, because a large percentage of the people studied were in areas such as medium to high socioeconomic statuses, university day cares and so forth, most of these are regulated, so there may in fact be a higher percentage of regulated care in these studies than outside in the general public.

Mrs Pupatello: Does that mean that your pool of research then didn't reflect the actual use of day care in Ontario?

Dr Genuis: The whole gamut has been included. This is from studies for four years --

Mrs Pupatello: No, only that the greater percentage of day care is not regulated, so your pool then did not reflect what truly exists out there; is that right?

Dr Genuis: It's not my pool. I am reporting to you the results of the information.

Mrs Pupatello: That's good enough. Thank you.

Dr Genuis: And the other point is that it does represent -- in fact, the limitation of the study, as you'll see when you read through the report, the first limitation is, a higher than representative percentage of the studies have included middle socioeconomic statuses, but you must remember that the whole range has been directly assessed.

The other point is the family attachment -- I have talked about that -- with regard to addressing mother. The information has talked about not mothers but both parents. In fact, in the non-maternal care field, non-maternal is defined as non-parental because we found that when children are in the care of their fathers they are not at risk. That's to talk about the mothers.

Mrs Pupatello: Could I just ask a question --

Dr Genuis: And the last point, before you go on -- let me finish because it's important --

Mrs Pupatello: I'm the one that's going to get cut off, actually --

Dr Genuis: Oh, I apologize.

Mrs Pupatello: Can you tell me, you're based in Calgary, you're from Calgary?

Dr Genuis: I'm from Toronto but I'm based in Calgary, yes.

Mrs Pupatello: The organization is based in Calgary?

Dr Genuis: Is now based in Calgary, yes.

Mrs Pupatello: You're a charity --

Dr Genuis: Yes.

Mrs Pupatello: -- a non-profit charity, so you have donors from corporations. Who would your largest donor be to your organization?

Dr Genuis: Our largest donor? Our largest donor would be a -- I don't know if they are donating as a family or through a company, but it's Trinity Energy Ltd based in Lloydminster and Calgary. We have various individuals and private foundations and --

Mrs Pupatello: Any political organizations?

Dr Genuis: None. No political, no religious, and no government.

1700

Mr Martin: Good afternoon, Mr Genuis. I find your presentation extremely interesting and I have some real concern. I'm the father of four kids myself. The oldest is 12; the youngest is six. Two of them went to preschool and two of them didn't, because my wife and I decided that two of them wanted to do that and would benefit from that and were ready to do that; two of them weren't. I guess I'll report back to this committee in about 15 years as to how they made out. It'll be a study in itself, won't it?

First of all, how did you get to come to this committee? Did you hear about it?

Dr Genuis: I was called by Ms Mellor or Ms Mellor's assistant and asked to come.

Mr Martin: Who put him on the list?

Interjection: We didn't.

Mr Martin: You didn't? I don't think we did. Did you put him on the list?

Mrs Ecker: I have no idea who's on the list, but he probably got on the list the same way every other group that came before us.

Mr Martin: It seems to me the process is we put some names forward and you put some names forward.

Interjection.

Mr Martin: It's okay. I just wanted to know that.

You've been at this for about 18 months now?

Dr Genuis: The organization formally received its charitable status on November 25, 1994.

Mr Martin: You've obviously referenced it yourself; there was a very critical article in the Globe and Mail on April 27 about your findings --

Dr Genuis: Yes. You should also be aware that we've received written apologies for some of the misquotes in that product. We've received a number of apologies from Ms Philp as well as some of the people quoted in there, so I'd be careful about drawing too much.

Mr Martin: So you're saying that this just doesn't hold up, that the people here who challenge you re whether you really did publish, whether you really did present -- that you did all those things. You're saying that this is all wrong?

Dr Genuis: In fact we have submitted a response to the Globe and Mail which they somehow have decided not to print, at least as yet, and have a formal response going out. And, yes, the information is incorrect. The vast, vast majority of information is incorrect, yes.

Mr Peter L. Preston (Brant-Haldimand): In a newspaper? Shocking.

Mr Martin: How do you deal with the fact, being at this for 18 months, a long, long time, that a lot of what you're presenting is in direct contrast to what players in the field for a number of years are saying and suggesting is in the better interests of the children whom we all have very serious responsibility for and want to do the best for? Do you have any difficulty with the fact that maybe what you're presenting, because it's obviously getting a pretty good uptake, might in fact have a serious result for all of us?

Dr Genuis: Yes. I assure you that as a psychologist I'm aware that my brain is fully developed by this age, so I'm able to read and understand and comprehend and share information at a very sophisticated level. So that's one. You should also know that the data that I am presenting to you is based on players in the field from all over the world for 40 years. I am simply sharing the information with you.

The research that I'm presenting to you, for example, from the meta-analyses, the three of them -- two have been conducted in the United States and one of them conducted in Canada -- are all conducted by very senior people throughout the world, and so I am simply presenting to you the information from serious players in the world all over. If there are people coming in who are presenting to you contradictory information from one study or another -- we've gone over that about the difference in validity between a study and of comprehensive and cutting-edge technologies of meta-analyses. If you have people coming in front of you lobbying for one way or another, I can't tell you why they would be saying something different, but when we do look at the data, when we do look at the information gained from the careful examination of people's lives conducted by junior and senior people throughout the world, when we bring that information together, when we standardize it, when we analyse it, void a researcher bias, sir, we have very clear results. There are some limitations in the data, but frankly it is the best in all of the information we have to date. If you are going to be making decisions as decision-makers of society, I would encourage you to pay attention to the most recent and the most comprehensive information we have available, and that's why I'm presenting that to you.

Mr Martin: Could I just have one last quick question?

The Chair: Quick.

Mr Martin: This guy is obviously a bright guy. After 18 months in the field, we don't want to miss an opportunity to ask him a good question.

Your recommendation here in the summary is that we enhance the economic strength of Ontario families. What would you say to a government which has just taken 21.6% out of the resources that the most vulnerable of our families take home to put food on the table and housing over their heads and clothing on their backs?

Dr Genuis: Are you talking specifically about welfare families, sir?

Mr Martin: Yes, to take a quarter of their income away. Is that in support of the economic strength of Ontario families?

Dr Genuis: What I would recommend to you, sir, is that as the organization, as I said earlier, as a psychologist -- and please have it understood first that this is breaking out somewhat from what I originally came to address you with, so I'm not making a formal presentation to answer this question in this area at all. Please understand that. However, when you look at that particular area, our organization would focus on prevention. When we look at prevention, what we would argue is that it might be in the best interests of society to look at what develops people into these particular situations. We would argue that the government would be best served by increasing opportunity for these people to move off that system rather than continuing simply to work within that realm that doesn't seem to be bringing any strict benefits when you look at the increases. But I would request another time to come before you and present specific data in this area so I could speak to it intelligently and based on information rather than based on intellectual arguments.

The Chair: Thank you kindly for presenting obviously stimulating and interesting information. We appreciate your presence here.

Dr Genuis: Thank you for your time.

Mrs Pupatello: Just before the group breaks, I wanted to offer a copy of that document that was leaked from Comsoc. The government members likely don't have access to the description of the voucher system and the negative effect of the voucher system. I do have a copy. If you'd like to see it, please call my office, or I'll bring you a copy. While your member disagreed that it even existed, I do have a copy here and I'm very pleased to give you one.

Mrs Ecker: Mr Chair, I am getting extremely angry at the deliberate attempts by some members of the opposition to continue to scare the heck out of parents about what they think this government is or is not going to do. We may well have legitimate political differences of opinion about what is or is not going to happen, but I take great exception to Ms Pupatello continuing to do this kind of thing out there. That wasn't the point I was going to do.

Mrs Pupatello: This is yours.

Mrs Ecker: It is not and it never has been. I take great exception to this.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make was, would it be fair if we could have, as part of the report of the committee, a list of whose witnesses are on, who put what witnesses on the list? I think that might be helpful for those analysing comments.

The Chair: That's fine.

There being no other comments, we will adjourn today and resume tomorrow afternoon at 3:30.

The committee adjourned at 1708.