Desperate government promises free daycare. What could go wrong?
LIBERALS THROW BILLIONS AT A WALL TO SEE WHAT MIGHT STICK
Sweaty desperation? Mad, flailing, put-it-onthe-credit-card panic? A bill of goods, even?
Pshaw. Premier Kathleen Wynne’s prebudget “free daycare” announcement on Tuesday was nothing of the sort. Ontario’s Liberals are proceeding just as they have always intended: carefully, compassionately, based on evidence, always twirling and twirling toward the activist centre.
Budget 2017: Balanced, at long last. We’ll have a parade!
Budget 2018: Blow it all to pieces. Money is free!
Seriously though, that does seem to be the promise. It’s a whopper: from the age of 2 ½ until eligibility for kindergarten at age four, as of 2020 — if you vote Liberal — every Ontarian child will have a “free” daycare spot waiting, never mind whether his or her folks can easily afford the cost. The projected cost when it rolls out in 2020: $930 million, part of a $ 2.2- billion package over three years to increase the number of licensed spaces and subsidies across the board, as well as salaries for daycare workers.
That’s practically nothing next to the province’s $ 312 billion in already accumulated net debt, so what the hell. Add it to the pile, and the kiddos can pay it off with interest at some point down the line. Think of it like OSAP for toddlers.
The policy arrived with a supporting paper from University of Toronto economist Gordon Cleveland, who attempts to answer one of the most obvious questions: why would kids of this age specifically get a “universal” daycare plan, while kids of other ages would continue to get means- tested subsidies?
“Preschool- aged child care is already very popular and most families seek out good quality group experiences for their children in the year or so before kindergarten,” Cleveland writes. “Making child care f ree would help all families with child care affordability in the years immediately before kindergarten.”
Well, yeah, but that rather goes without saying.
“Starting with preschool age makes sense in other ways,” Cleveland continues, promisingly. “There is already a large licensed capacity of child care available to serve children of this age, so shortages would be less acute than for other age groups.”
So ... it would be easier. It would, presumably, be significantly cheaper than the government diving in with its pocketbook immediately after parents’ leave runs out. Perhaps Ontario’s budget, to be tabled Wednesday with up to $ 8 billion in deficit spending, will map out the Liberals’ ultimate vision. But Cleveland’s seems to be an Ontario where daycare for older and younger children would be means- tested, while daycare for children ages two- and- a- half to four would be “universal.”
I don’ t quite understand it. One might tout the benefits of structured pre- kindergarten learning, but Cleveland doesn’t, really. And it’s an odd fit politically. “Universal” programs are difficult to defend unless the proponent has a credible plan to expand them beyond a certain demographic. This is why the Liberals insist their free prescriptions for senior citizens and people under 25 is just the beginning.
Many Ontarians will see “after 15 years in government” as a suspicious time to begin. And, meantime, the Liberals propose to direct taxpayer money toward a lot of people who were getting their prescriptions just fine, while doing nothing for anyone aged between 25 and 64 who can’t pay their pharmacy bills.
No question, expanding access to healthcare might get more people, women especially, into the workforce. In a speech earlier t his month in Kingston, Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz argued that applying daycare models like Quebec’s nationwide could add half a million people to the labour market and boost GDP by as much as $ 30 billion.
But Quebec’s ostensibly “universal” system, l ong fetishized by those on the left, hasn’t the reputation it used to.
“T here are i mpor t ant lessons to learn from Que- bec about how funding and policy plans can go awry,” Cleveland warns in his study. Notably, wealthier parents stampeded over less- wealthy ones and occupied spaces they could easily have paid for anyway. Meanwhile, shortages persisted.
“This provides a crucial reminder that problems of phase- in and transition are at least as important as initial funding policy plans,” Cleveland writes, trenchantly.
Indeed, while the Liberals’ plan might not be to everyone’s liking ideologically, there is no reason to believe a competent, diligent government couldn’t make reasonably good on the plan announced Tuesday — or any other plan, for that matter. Some jurisdictions, like the Scandinavian nations, insist on keeping the cost to all parents relatively low, while others, like Australia, are more concerned with access for the poorest.
Do Ontarians think this Liberal government, which is currently throwing billions of dollars at a giant wall to see what might stick, are such a competent, diligent government? Are they confident this Liberal government would not only follow through on the plan, but do so while avoiding all the ways “funding and policy plans can go awry”? And after 15 years of, shall we say, less-than-totally fulfilled promises on daycare?
It’s a big ask. But big asks are all the Liberals have.