Canada lacking in early child care
Prince George Citizen / Canadian Press
26 Oct 2006

TORONTO (CP) -- Countries around the world need to make early childhood education a higher priority according to a United Nations report released Thursday, and child advocates say Canada is no exception.

In its annual report on education in developing nations, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) found the majority of countries need to focus their efforts on policies that address the needs of an age group that is often overlooked.

Louise Zimanyi, co-director of the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development, says Canada's track record in this area is particularly poor given the vast resources available throughout the country.

She said Canada lacks any sort of cohesive early childhood policy and blames the Conservative government for undermining plans that would have set the country on the right track.

"A national childcare plan was developed, there were federal/provincial agreements, and Harper came into leadership and scrapped that," she said in an interview from Yew York.

Zimanyi expressed contempt for the government's Individual Cash Payment program through which all families with children under the age of six receive $1,200 a year per child.

She scoffed at the sum of money, saying it was barely enough to cover one month's worth of childcare expenses, let alone establish programs that benefit young children in the long run.

"It costs a lot to raise a child," she said.

"I'm not sure why they think that's valuable."

Nicholas Burnett, director of the team that assembled the UNESCO report, said cash transfers have been used as a tool by some countries that have made the most significant improvements to their early childhood programs.

These transfers, however, are reserved for particularly poor families and are used in a different way.

"The cash transfers are often conditional on such things as participating in an early childhood program," he said.

Burnett said such programs are most prevalent in Latin American countries, which showed the greatest progress among developing nations in terms of establishing childhood care policies. The report found that 62 per cent of children in these countries had taken part in a pre-primary program, compared to only 12 per cent in most African nations.