The amendment to Bill C-35, which aims to guarantee long-term funding for French-speaking daycares, was unanimously adopted Thursday by the House of Commons. Since the lower house approved the text of the law amended by the Senate, it will be able to receive royal assent.
“We feel a great sense of pride today. We have worked with strength and determination over the last few months to ensure our communities have fair and equitable funding for French-speaking daycares from one end of the country to the other,” wrote the president of the National Commission of Francophone Parents (CNPF). , Gillian Anderson.
“This finish line represents the fruit of several months of hard work […]including the sending of more than 3,600 letters to parliamentarians by francophones across the country,” jointly declared the CNPF and the Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities of Canada.
The House of Commons did not vote on the amendment to clause 8 of the bill. Rather, it was “ordered,” by “unanimous consent,” that the motion “be deemed adopted,” a few minutes before the Speaker adjourned the House “out of respect for the memory” of Brian Mulroney, whose death was announced Thursday evening.
In March 2022, the Ontario and federal governments implemented a five-year plan to reduce the cost of child care to an average of $10 per day; Bill C-35 will ratify these agreements. The only modification adopted by the Senate was to ensure that section 8 of the legislative text commits the Government of Canada “to maintaining long-term funding” for childcare services intended for “official language minority communities” in the same way. than centers “intended for indigenous peoples”.
“Official language minority communities are not asking for a privilege with this amendment, they are simply asking that learning and child care programs and services […] be financed in the long term to ensure the future of their children,” recalled Acadian senator René Cormier, who proposed the amendment.
Without this clarification, the director general of the CNPF, Jean-Luc Racine, feared that it would be “possible to read into the bill a deliberate intention not to include official language minority communities”. “The only thing that is permanent and lasting is the laws. »
This report is supported by the Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the Government of Canada.