Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I move that Clause 13 of Bill 68 be amended by deleting proposed subclause 19.2(2) and substituting the following:
(2) An operator shall not
Retaliate against a complainant under section 19.1; or
Disclose the identity of a complainant under section 19.1 except as is reasonably required to respond to the complaint.
And, Madam Chair, I request a recorded vote.
Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion? Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, this is, we feel on the committee, a really important change that needs to be made. Given the small nature of our sorry, the nature of our small towns, I think that it's really quite disingenuous to think that conversation is not going to happen around any sort of complaint or issue that is brought forward. And what not having the ability to speak about the complainant does to the day care provider or the day home provider is that it doesn't it hampers them from being allowed to go and get advice from their peer group. It doesn't allow them to properly be able to defend themselves against any sort of complaint. I think it gives an avenue then should they do inadvertently disclose someone's name, it gives another avenue for retaliation, especially in a situation where the complaint is actually vexatious and not of an actual nature that's maybe grounded in reality. So we felt that by hampering or by keeping people restricted and sorry, I'm having a hard time articulating myself here today after this week. But that it would add detriment to the providers and not fair. We also wanted them to have the ability to be unhampered should they need to engage legal counsel or any sort of adjudication platform that may come out of a remediation type situation. And it's our understanding from our legal counsel that this does prohibit defendants, or whatever we want to call them, from engaging and telling their legal counsel who exactly is the complainant. So I think rather than set up a situation where people are going to be in violation of the Act because people talk, and it's a small town, I think it's better if we were to make this amendment so that there is some avenue for flexibility in how this is all dealt with. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. To the motion? Member for or Minister of ECE.
Thank you, Madam Chair. And this motion was brought forward at the clause by clause, and at that time I did not concur with it. I think there was a bit of, I think, miscommunication between myself and committee in terms of what this actual this clause meant. I think there was a perception that it meant that the complaint itself could not be discussed with anyone. But the issue was the just the identity of the complainant we did not want exposed.
This act or this bill proposes to provide child care providers with information, a summary of the complaint when it is made, which is currently not the process. So this is sort of a give and take. There's additional information going to child care providers, and as such we just want to ensure there's a little more production for families. And this is not something we expect that would come into play very often. The vast majority of cases are, you know, there's the vast majority of complaints are dealt with very quickly. There's many that are found to not be substantiated. Some might be vexatious. And when the complaints are founded, staff go in and they work with the providers to ensure that they can rectify those issues. We don't want things to progress to another level. So, you know, in speaking with some of the committee members, there was examples given of, you know, a new day home operator might be receiving complaints and they want to go and speak to someone who is more experienced about how to, you know, deal with those issues, and there's nothing wrong with that. The issue would be to would be about identifying the assumed complainant because, as was mentioned, it is a small community, and we don't want anyone to be any parents to have a bad reputation that might cause them difficulty in getting child care.
