Daycare lacking for needy: Study Access uneven in low-income neighbourhoods
Toronto Star
Jul. 5, 2006
By: LAURIE MONSEBRAATEN
EXCERPT

Canada's neediest children have the toughest time getting regulated daycare, according to a new national study on early learning in 11 cities.

Even in Quebec, where the provincial government has poured more than $1 billion into creating a universal system of low-cost child care, low-income neighbourhoods have the least amount of service, says the report to be released today by the City of Toronto.

The report, entitled "Learning from Each Other: Early Learning and Child Care Experiences in Canadian Cities," points to the need for more regional planning to ensure all communities have equal access to this service, considered essential at a time when more than 70 per cent of mothers of young children work outside the home.

"The situation where the communities with the greatest social capital obtain the most resources is far too common," says the report. Although Ontario is the only province where cities are legally mandated to plan for child care, the report suggests municipalities with their "on-the-ground expertise" should play a greater role.

But that can only happen if larger amounts of stable funding are available from senior governments, says the report commissioned by Social Development Canada and the cities of Toronto and Vancouver.

"As the Toronto and Vancouver stories show, even with a strong vision, a clear plan and a well-developed local infrastructure, inequities will arise as long as there is insufficient funding to provide a place for all who want and need it."

The study is the first look at local children's programs including child care, kindergarten and recreation in cities across the country and includes data collected last fall from St. John's, Halifax, Montreal, Sherbrooke, Toronto, Sudbury, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary, Vancouver and Whitehorse.

It was written and researched by Rianne Mahon, director of Carleton University's Institute of Political Economy and University of Montreal political scientist Jane Jenson.

None of the cities has enough child care service for children from birth to age 12, they found. But all have universal kindergarten for 5-year-olds, and in three provinces - New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec - this service is compulsory....

Inadequate and uneven levels of child-care service will continue if Stephen Harper's Conservative government cancels federal-provincial child-care funding agreements next spring, as planned, the report says.

Although children's services vary widely across the country, the most successful are universal programs organized around "hubs" that are able to integrate child care, parent support, recreation and other services such as public health and libraries, the report found.