Social Policy in Ontario

Build a national child care system

Posted on December 13, 2016 in Child & Family Debates

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TheStar.com – Opinion/Editorials – A new study shows child care fees have spiked 15 per cent in the past two years in Toronto. It’s more evidence of the need for a national, affordable child care system now.
Dec. 12, 2016.   Editorial

Anyone with young kids knows how tough it is to find affordable, licensed child care. Now a new study shows that it’s getting even more out of reach.

In its latest report on daycare, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that fees across the country have jumped an average of more than 8 per cent in the last two years. That’s three times faster than the rate of inflation. In Toronto they’ve spiked by a daunting 15 per cent.

As one of the study’s authors, David Macdonald, noted: “This can amount to parents paying $1,000 more a year per child than they did just two years ago.”

It’s got to stop. Federal, provincial and municipal governments across the country must work together to establish an affordable, universal childcare system.

If they don’t, some parents may even be forced to quit working. Consider Toronto mother Crystal Hunt, whose story was told in Monday’s Star. Monthly daycare costs for her two toddlers add up to $2,600 — her entire after-tax salary. Without her husband’s salary, she couldn’t afford to work.

It’s not just the cost of child care that is challenging families. It’s the availability. Two years ago the centre reported that three-quarters of mothers of young children are in the workforce, but there are licensed spots available for less than a quarter of children under 5.

The lack of space is even tougher on the poor, who need subsidized day care spaces to afford to go to work or even look for it. In Toronto alone in 2016 there were 16,802 eligible children in the queue for subsidized daycare.

It’s no wonder, then, that under the Harper government the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranked Canada dead last out of 25 countries for the quality and accessibility of its child-care programs.

That’s bad news for children, parents, the economy and government tax coffers.

Studies of children, for example, show that daycare can reduce inequalities that result from poverty by identifying problems and making early intervention more likely. And better education helps to reduce skills shortages and spending on health and social services down the road.

Meanwhile, a lack of child care can keep some women out of the work force and reduce the earning power of others — hurting their family’s bottom line, the economy and the government’s tax base.

Indeed, an Ontario government task force found the No. 1 way to reduce the gap between men’s and women’s pay is for the province to commit to an affordable and publicly funded geared-to-income child-care program.

That same study found the cost of such a plan may be high, but the benefits far outweigh it: Every dollar invested in child care adds $2.47 to the Ontario economy.

Hence the province’s smart promise to create an additional 100,000 licensed child-care spots over the next five years. Even that will be far from enough.

Ten years ago the Harper government scrapped a Liberal plan for a $5-billion federal-provincial national child-care program.

You would have thought, then, that one of the first things Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government would have done would be to reinstate that commitment. Alas, its 2016 budget earmarked only $400,000 to create a child care framework. Now the government is promising to make a long-term funding commitment in the 2017 federal budget.

What that will be is anyone’s guess. In the meantime, families continue to struggle while the economy and the government’s bottom line continue to suffer.

< https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2016/12/12/build-a-national-child-care-system-editorial.html >

Tags: budget, child care, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, standard of living, women

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