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Responses to the OECD report
November 2004
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No more patchwork child care
Globe and Mail
By PEGGY NASH and MARTHA FRIENDLY
Monday, November 1, 2004
Forget stitching together vouchers and unregulated services.
We need national, quality coverage, say union child-care veteran
PEGGY NASH and activist MARTHA FRIENDLY.
Peggy Nash, a senior representative of the Canadian
Auto Workers union, has been influential in bargaining child-care
programs and subsidies with employers for CAW members. Martha
Friendly is a senior research associate at the University
of Toronto's Childcare Resource and Research Unit.
Over the last generation, growing numbers of women have
joined men, working in all jobs and professions. As the Organization
for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said last
week, Canadian mothers now work outside the home in greater
numbers than most other countries -- about 70 per cent of
all mothers of children under age 6.
Research has confirmed that high-quality early-learning
programs benefit all children, whether or not their mother
is in the paid work force. But as a hard-hitting new OECD
report has shown, Canadian social policy has not kept pace.
We invest less than half of what most developed nations devote
on average in terms of economic output to early-childhood
education, and have fewer spaces.
Across Canada, families face the same barriers. There's
not enough regulated child care to meet demand. Many existing
programs are of questionable quality. Waiting lists are long;
some communities have no child care at all. With daily fees
running as high as $60 or $70 for the youngest children, costs
are a significant barrier.
So most Canadian families are left on their own. Parents
work opposite shifts to cover children's care, or rely on
relatives or neighbours, or use unregulated services. (This,
says the OECD report, is "an issue of real concern. Quality
enforcement in the regulated sector is difficult enough, but
impossible in the unregulated sector.")
Unions such as the Canadian Auto Workers and the Canadian
Union of Postal Workers have negotiated with employers to
create child-care programs. Much, much more is needed. To
solve Canada's child-care crisis, governments must lead the
way.
Fortunately, the federal government is ready to move on
its election promise to invest substantially in building "a
Canada-wide system of early learning and child care . . .
that will ensure all children have access to high-quality,
government-regulated spaces at affordable costs to parents."
The minister in charge, Ken Dryden, views this as the next
great social initiative, as significant as the launch of medicare
or public education. Today, Mr. Dryden sits down with his
provincial/territorial counterparts to discuss an agreement
for the flow of money.
Let's hope the players can rise above their usual jurisdictional
wrangling to put children first. This has to be about more
than who gets how much, with the fewest strings. Our political
leaders are charged with the responsibility for transforming
Canada's sorry patchwork of services into the kind of publicly
funded system of early learning and child care from which
children in other countries so richly benefit.
Like health care, this new social program must be guided
by the values that most Canadians hold dear. Child-care services
must be funded to meet the demands of modern families and
to support young children to reach their full potential --
as well as to enjoy themselves as children. The program must
be open to all children, regardless of where they live, their
culture, special needs, family income or parents' employment
status. It must be backed by sufficient, stable and dedicated
federal and provincial funding, and strong accountability
mechanisms.
As the social development ministers start their negotiations,
we offer the following practical advice, based on our experience.
Be clear about how child-care money can be used. Child-care
funds should be dedicated to ensuring high-quality developmental
early learning and child care, not underfunded, poorly designed
and poorly resourced arrangements. Decisions about the use
of money should be based on substantial research, demonstrating
the dividends that these kinds of programs provide for the
individual child, the family and society as a whole.
Fund child-care programs directly, not using vouchers or
subsidies. Vouchers or subsidies to parents do not create
child care. The unions negotiated subsidies for autoworkers,
but many found they couldn't use them: There weren't enough
child-care spaces. The OECD recommends ". . . a move away
from personal subsidy mechanisms toward operational funding
and an entitlement for children, as in the traditional education
model." We wouldn't have a public education system today if
past generations had relied on education chits.
Support a well-trained, well-compensated child-care work
force. Adequate resources and good child-staff ratios mean
that qualified staff will be able to meet children's needs.
Good pay and benefits will address the high staff turnover
that plagues many child-care programs. If we believe that
child-care centres should deliver early learning, how we treat
those who provide it is critical.
Ensure accountability for the funding. Public funds should
go only to care for children, so we suggest that, ultimately,
early learning and child care is public or not for profit.
This will mean formulating a transition plan that recognizes
the current mixed delivery system. There is no room for profit
in publicly funded early learning and child care. The current
discussions are our chance to get the fundamentals right.
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Child care in poor shape, study says: Canada's system
described as fractured and underfunded
The Vancouver Sun, Oct 26, 2004
Norma Greenaway
OTTAWA -- A new international report that characterizes
much of Canada's child-care system as expensive, glorified
babysitting should be a wake-up call to stop pumping money
into bad programs, a leading children's expert says.
Martha Friendly, an analyst at the University of Toronto,
says the report by the Organization of Economic Co-operation
and Development paints an accurate picture of the patchwork
quilt of programs that have failed Canada's pre-schoolers.
The report, released Monday, said the Canadian system is
fractured, seriously underfunded and gives short shrift to
the educational component of child care. It says subsidy programs
are inequitable, some centres are poorly equipped and that
workers are too often poorly trained and poorly paid.
"People do not want to keep throwing money at this bad system,"
Friendly, co-ordinator of the child care research and resource
centre at the university, said in an interview. "It's time
to act. We need an action plan."
Social Development Minister Ken Dryden says the report should
fuel the effort to build a national child-care system, something
he says he wants to push when he meets his provincial and
territorial counterparts in Ottawa next week.
He said in an interview ministers must explore how to "measure"
success while putting money into such critical things as quality
early learning spaces and training child-care workers.
Dryden said he hopes new money can start flowing in the
expected February budget if Ottawa and the provinces and territories
reach an agreement in the coming weeks.
The Martin government has promised to invest $5 billion
over five years in a national child-care program that it says
must be universal, affordable, accessible and also boast an
educational element. The sensitive negotiations with the provinces
and territories will revolve around what strings get attached
to the money.
Likening the current child-care system to where the education
system was a 100 years ago, and where the health-care system
was four decades ago, Dryden urged patience and said the vision
of a complete system will eventually be achieved.
Friendly said the provinces and territories should be pushed
to provide a coherent three-year plan for creating affordable,
regulated spaces with educational components before they get
any federal money. "Each province should have clearly set
out goals, targets, timetables, responsibilities," she said.
WHAT THE OECD REPORT SAYS ABOUT THE CANADIAN CHILD-CARE
SYSTEM:
The report criticizes Canadian governments for:
- Spending too little per child on care.
- Letting the market determine fee structure, which means
that with the exception of Quebec and Manitoba, parents
are paying an "excessive" share of the costs, ranging from
34 per cent to 82 per cent.
- An inefficient subsidy system that imposes complex and
wildly varying eligibility rules, which have hampered access
by lone parents and low-income couples.
- "Chronic underfunding" of learning materials, physical
premises and research and training programs.
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Canada's new shame: Cheating its children with two-bit
child care
The Vancouver Province
Oct 27, 2004
James McNulty, B.C.'s Liveliest Opinions
It didn't take long for the voices of denial to kick in
when Canada was labelled this week as a world loser in providing
child care.
The great white north has fallen far behind child-care standards
in other western democracies with a "dismal" junkyard of starving,
unregulated programs, said a startling review from the Organization
for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Other developed nations invest more than twice the amount
Canada spends, in terms of economic output, on early-childhood
education. Outside of Quebec, fewer than 20 per cent of kids
under age six with working parents are in regulated child-care
spaces, compared to 78 per cent in Denmark, 69 per cent in
France and 60 per cent in Britain.
British Columbia was singled out as having more pathetic
child care than Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island,
with a "lack of clarity about policy, strategies and implementation."
By any measure this is shocking business for a nation that
would rather hide behind a false sense of moral superiority
than give its youngsters the same opportunities available
elsewhere.
But not to the voices of tax cuts, free enterprise and less
government, who see investing in essential social programs
as wasteful mollycoddling of whiners too lazy to become entrepreneurial
millionaires.
In an editorial yesterday that represents the best of "I'm
Alright Jack" thinking, The National Post rained scorn on
the "Paris-based" report:
"This reflects the now-fashionable view among the elites
that the job of raising children should be taken as much as
possible out of the hands of mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles,
grandparents, neighbours and friends, and transferred to government-regulated
and subsidized professionals with graduate degrees in early
childhood education."
Parents should depend on "relatives and friends," the Post
argued, then suggested "parents should have a wide range of
options" in child care, and Canada's "priority should be to
preserve existing options."
This is a fine attitude for well-heeled families that can
afford the best in private child care, but exactly what options
are available to Canada's working poor?
Not many if they live outside Quebec or Manitoba, where
child-care fees are regulated. The OECD says that in other
provinces, parents pay an "excessive" share averaging 50 per
cent of child-care costs, compared to "approximately 25 per
cent across Europe."
Single parents and low-income families had the lowest rates
of access to subsidized programs in Canada, a maze of complex
rules and uneven standards.
Why would we want to preserve such a shambles?
We don't, and there is a modest glimmer of hope in the $5-billion
child-care package promised by federal Liberals. Social Development
Minister Ken Dryden will meet next week with the provinces
to coax them aboard an upgraded national system, with funding
to begin in the February federal budget.
Better late than never. It is time to re-invest in our children
and put this national disgrace to bed.
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