Child care

This blogpost appeared in the Globe and Mail on February 18th. 

By now, everybody is surely aware that the core commitments of the Liberal federal government are to “build a strong middle-class” and “help those working hard to join it.” But economic progress and social progress over the past three years seems to have been very limited, and it is far from clear that the government is pursuing the best overall strategy to promote higher living standards and greater income equality.

On June 22, the BC Legislature reconvened and Premier Christy Clark tabled a curious Throne Speech which bore little resemblance to the platform her BC Liberal party ran on just weeks before.

The best line of the Trudeau government’s first day— widely reported and praised in the international media—was the new PM’s.

As an early childhood researcher newly arrived from Finland, the current Canadian debate about universal childcare has been somewhat baffling.

In Finland, universal early childhood education and childcare (ECEC) means that if a child's parents want her/him to attend, the municipality in which they live is obliged to provide them with a place irrespective of the parents’ work/life situation. 

My grandmother used to tell me that "nothing worth doing ever comes easy."

Well, a national, quality, affordable child care program is unquestionably worth doing. And come easy it won't.

It is pretty clear that in the often fractious environment of Canadian federalism, Canadians do better when multi-levels of government and political parties work together to put people’s well-being first.

This goes for all sorts of things — environmental protection, trade, securities regulation, infrastructure. Nowhere is it clearer than in the social policy arena of health, welfare and social provision.  

Many economists, particularly those that are male, find it difficult to understand the public interest in providing funding to child care. 

Recent tensions in relationships between provincial governments and teachers, especially in British Columbia and Ontario, deserve to be understood in a wider context. Good labour relations in education and positive working relationships between provincial governments and teacher unions are a critical ingredient in the relative success of our public education system.

Canada's education system is generally recognized to deliver good results compared to most other countries. 

After enduring well over a decade of broken promises, the prospects for publicly-funded child care in Canada looked good in the autumn of 2005.

The Paul Martin government proposed to create thousands of new day-care spaces and had also negotiated deals with most provinces and territories to turn a patch-work of often poor-quality services into a system of early learning and child care with national standards.

With a national child care program back on the front burner, it’s time we talk about the links between child care and child poverty. 

Here’s the bottom line: affordable and reliable child care in Canada could help lift 300,000 children under six, and their low and modest income families, out of poverty.

Today, very few such families have access to regulated, high-quality and affordable child care. Instead, these families compete for regulated daycare spaces accessible to only about one in five children under six years old, most of which come with costs beyond their reach.