| MPP
Arnott Calls on Government to Support
Healthy Babies, Healthy Children
In
response to a recent resolution passed by Waterloo Regional
Council, Waterloo-Wellington MPP Ted Arnott asked the
Minister of Children and Youth Services a Question in
the Ontario Legislature on April 7, 2004.
The
following is the Hansard record of his exchange with
the Minister.
Mr
Ted Arnott (Waterloo-Wellington): My question is for
the Minister of Children and Youth Services and it concerns
the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program. This program
is intended to help all children reach their full potential
by ensuring that they get the best possible start in
life. The House may recall that I brought forward a
private member's resolution highlighting the Healthy
Babies, Healthy Children program in the spring of 1998.
My resolution passed with the unanimous support of the
House and was embraced by the health minister of the
day, the member for Kitchener-Waterloo. Later that spring,
the provincial government responded in its 1998 budget,
making a commitment to raise funding for this program
fivefold for a period of years.
Recently,
Waterloo regional council approached me with the news
that the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program may
be scaled back. The region may be compelled to cut six
full-time employees because of the way resources are
being allocated by the Ministry of Health. This means
families in my riding will receive less service. I ask
the minister: Is she concerned about this funding issue
and the resulting loss of service that my constituents
will suffer, and what is she prepared to do about it?
Hon
Marie Bountrogianni (Minister of Children and Youth
Services, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration):
I'd like to thank the honourable member for the question.
Indeed, the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program
has been transferred to the Ministry of Children and
Youth Services as of last Thursday, and we are very
supportive of this program.
For
the year 2003-04, we spent $72.9 million for this program.
I will look into your question more closely, but I am
telling you that we are committed to this program. The
initial evaluations have shown that babies and children,
having gone through this program, do better on measures
of gross motor, fine motor and language development,
and we are undergoing another evaluation now to see
the long-term effects in junior kindergarten and senior
kindergarten.
Mr
Arnott: I appreciate the minister's willingness to respond
and her expression of support for the program, but she
needs to know that, even though the ministry's attempts
to crunch dollars and shift resources away from Healthy
Babies, Healthy Children may seem acceptable to her
government, the social and economic costs down the road
would far outweigh any short-term savings today.
Second,
it would be a disgrace to learn that the first major
reduction in this service for children happened because
the Liberals have taken a political approach and have
started to starve it of resources simply because it
was introduced by the previous government. I suspect
that the minister knows that with fewer service providers,
fewer children will receive the service they need and,
in turn, achieve success. The children not assisted
by the government run the risk of needing more intensive
and expensive programs and services later in life.
So
I ask the minister, will she take action not only to
prevent the elimination of these staff positions, but
will she agree to Waterloo region's request for full
funding to deliver the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children
program at the required level of service for Waterloo
region and across the province?
Hon
Mrs Bountrogianni: I'd like to thank the member for
the supplementary. I will look into that particular
situation. I can tell you that we have no plans of cutting
back on this service, because it's exactly the kind
of programming that we believe in on this side of the
House: preventive measures which, in the long run, not
only save money but are the right things to do for children
and families.
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