Canadian child care barely takes baby steps: Country ranks as one of worst in developed world, report says
The Daily News (Kamloops)
03 Feb 2007
By: Cam Fortems

A baby born when a royal commission first recommended a national child-care system in Canada would celebrate his or her 36th birthday this year.

Child care in Canada remains in its infancy, despite old promises from Conservative and Liberal governments.

A report commissioned by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2004 found Canada ranked near the bottom of 21 countries surveyed in providing early education and child care.

It found fewer than 20 per cent of children in regulated spaces, compared to rates of at least 60 per cent in much of Europe.

"There has been no significant expansion of the system in Canada over the past decade," the report stated.

The exception is Quebec. To many in the child-care and development field, the province is a model to which every other government in Canada should aspire.

For $7 a day, parents are able to place their children in regulated child care. That compares in B.C., for example, to rates starting at $25 a day -- kept lower through a government operating grant of $2 to $4 a day slated to be cut in June.

Kevin Milligan, an economist at the University of British Columbia, looked at the child-care debate in light of Quebec's system, instituted in 1997.

QUEBEC HELPS WORKING MOTHERS

One of the findings of the study for the C.D. Howe Institute, authored along with Jonathan Gruber, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Michael Baker, a public policy expert at University of Toronto, was that Quebec's system encouraged more parents to enter the workforce. Since the program's introduction in Quebec the proportion of working mothers in two-parent families entering the workforce increased by 21 per cent, double the rate elsewhere in Canada. Most of that work was full time.

"What really changed was access by middle-class families," Milligan said. "That's what the big push of the Liberal national program was all about." Kamloops parent Chris Austin, playing with his one-year-old daughter, Esmee, at the YM-YWCA's Aberdeen resource centre, is one of those parents searching in vain for child care.

"They say there's a shortage of workers," said Austin, who is no longer able to pick up casual labour shifts at Royal Inland Hospital because he is taking care of Esmee.

"Yet employers don't have any day care."

A MATTER OF HOURS AND AFFORDABILITY

Austin said he is on several waiting lists for child care in Kamloops but it either doesn't fit his hours or he can't afford it based on the couple's earnings.

David Baxter, an economist with Vancouver-based Urban Futures, is less certain universal child care would bring more workers into a labour force shortage, calling prospective gains "on the margin."

"There should be a cost-benefit analysis," he said of the cost of bringing more workers through universal child care.

"There are young people who aren't able to earn enough to cover child care. They would work."

But he noted most adults are already working in Canada.

"Ninety-three per cent of males and 82 per cent of females are already in the workforce."

Meghan Wade, a Kamloops-Thompson school trustee, operates the Willowtree program on contract with the Ministry of Employment and Assistance. It provides women on welfare with the confidence and life skills to get into the workforce.

While there are childcare subsidies available, Wade said the problem is finding care.

"Recently, and for the first time, women have had trouble finding care. . . . We've been calling to the licensed day cares, something we always advise," she said.

"We've even called around for them asking if they have spots. They're saying no. It's the worst I've seen it."

Wade suspects women who were providing care for children have left the field for more lucrative employment.

"We're in the middle of a crunch."

While advocates tout eventual savings by society from children who perform better in school thanks to the structure of early learning environments, the C.D. Howe Institute study found money can start to flow back to government long before these children reach adulthood.

The study found the federal and Quebec governments received back about 40 per cent of revenues spent on universal child care in that province through increased taxation.

"There's not a lot of government programs where you get a return of 40 per cent," Milligan said. "You talk about spending on child care and you're not talking 100-cent dollars. It's 60 cents."

'SEEMS TO BE BUCK PASSING'

B.C. political scientist Norman Ruff said Gordon Campbell's Liberal government let the federal Tories escape a federal government commitment to child care.

"They're wringing their hands and saying, 'It's not us.' There seems to be buck passing here."

Ruff said Campbell let the Harper government withdraw billion-dollar commitments from the previous government without a word of opposition, unlike vocal denunciation from Quebec.

"It's deplorable. I don't think the province can just wash its hands and say, 'It's federal cutbacks and we're passing it along.' They do have choices. With the surplus they do have the resources."