Bill No. 13 - Day Care Act - Third Reading

MS. CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : It's my pleasure to rise again to speak to third reading of the Day Care Act. This is a housekeeping bill; the changes are relatively small. As I said previously, I do appreciate the importance and the significance for the sector in changing the language to reflect the professional work done by early childhood educators across the province. I think it's important, and similarly, more fully reflecting family home child care in the legislation will hopefully relate to a greater acknowledgement of the role of those service providers in our community as well.

Unfortunately, the same factors for a long time have affected the entrance and retention of early childhood educators, which isn't addressed in this bill. I know the government is doing some work in this regard but it remains a challenge. There are low wages, stressful working conditions, and a lack of recognition paid to early childhood educators, so we appreciate that there is some work being done here.

We need to look at how we attract people and keep people in the field. We need to look at wages, working conditions, length of their day, planning and programming, and benefits for early childhood providers, certainly those who are in the pre-Primary program. I think that is being contemplated by government and by the hard work of the department, but we still have a very broad sector outside of that, which has suffered somewhat from the introduction of pre-Primary in terms of workforce issues and which does continue to require more attention.

I suggest that an opportunity to this end was somewhat missed with existing providers as alternative sites for the program. I know the government has said that this is something they would consider, but we're hearing about students in portables all over HRM, three-year-olds and four-year-olds being put in with junior high schools. I have to believe that there are licensed early childhood education centres that could accommodate some of these programs which would go a long way to continuing to ensure their viability and the availability of those spots.

I think we need to be working closely with the sector to make sure that changes in government policy don't have a negative impact, that we don't have those unintended consequences, both for the sector and the workforce issues that I mentioned, but especially for our young children who are cared for and educated by the folks working in this sector.

I hope that these amendments do improve the childcare landscape in the province. I hope that there aren't any of those unintended consequences but, most importantly, I look forward to someday soon being able to discuss the additional changes needed to build a truly universal high-quality, affordable, and accessible system of early learning and child care in Nova Scotia.

I can anticipate the minister's comments. We've heard all of the great things that the minister has done. He is never at a loss for words to tell us about the wonderful work of the people in the department, and I applaud the hard-working civil servants in that department, but I would argue that we still have a long way to go and it would be nice, sometimes, to be able to, in fact, discuss changes rather than just having to digest them.