Childcare needs good governance: Canada tied with Ireland for last place in UNICEF's recent report on childcare standards.
January 05, 2009
Moncton Times and Transcript/Straight Goods
Elsie Hambrook, Chairperson of the New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women.

Mothers with paid employment are here to stay. Childcare services are here to stay. In developed countries generally, more than two-thirds of young children are in non-parental care arrangements. In New Brunswick that proportion is even higher.

Because non-parental care is now so much a part of most children's lives, UNICEF — everyone's favourite defender of children — put together minimum standards for early learning and childcare, and recently released a report on which wealthy countries meet those standards for children.

Out of the 10 benchmarks, Canada met only one: half of our staff in accredited early-education services have proper post-secondary qualifications.

A family with two children may well be paying more in childcare fees than they do on their mortgage or rent.

Canada and Ireland were in last place. Sweden met all 10 benchmarks, Iceland met nine and Denmark, Finland, France and Norway met eight.

To meet UNICEF's minimum standards, a country:

• should have a plan;
• it should give priority to disadvantaged children;
• it should offer parental leave of one year;
• 80 percent of four year olds and 25 percent of those under the age of three should be able to find a spot in subsidized regulated childcare; and,
• 80 percent of childcare staff should be trained.

Oh, and fewer than 10 percent of children should be living in poverty.

With so many children in non-parental care while their parents work or study, the quality of childcare services is becoming a critical area of concern for the well being of children.

A national network of quality childcare services will have to wait for strong federal leadership and new funding. While the prospect may not look promising, such as system is likely to come in our lifetime — or else Canada will be left in the dust of its competitors.

The current federal government has cut federal funding to the provinces that supported childcare services….

In childcare services, "good governance" countries provide stable public funding to childcare programs, allowing programs to pay decent wages, raise training standards and bring down parent fees to levels that parents can afford. Governance — a new buzz word, but useful — is about responsibility for making things happen. Good governance has been defined as meeting the present and future needs.

Many countries have adopted a good governance approach to helping families balance their work and family responsibilities.

In Canada, the province of Quebec is an example.

Quebec parents have a much more generous parental leave program than other provinces, and once Quebec parents return to work after taking this leave, childcare is available — albeit still with waiting lists — at $7 per day….

But our collective responsibility towards children requires that we do more. We have recognized our responsibility in other areas of children's lives, and we intervene to make sure that things are done right. For example, public education is affordable, available and of good quality. Teachers make a decent wage for their work and are highly trained.

This has not always been the case. At some point, as a society we decided that the education of our children was too important to leave to chance and that we had a collective responsibility to intervene.

Mothers are in the workforce to stay. Families depend on this income to survive, especially lone-parent families. Our economy depends on it as well. What would happen to our economy if one parent in every family with children under the age of 12 were to leave the workforce?