Public system good for kids: profs
A public and universal daycare program would have a significant impact on child development and the provincial economy.
But it’s not happening anytime soon.
“We continue in Canada and Nova Scotia to have a marketbased and uncoordinated approach to child care, which results in three key issues – high fees for parents, not enough spaces, and questions around wages and staff retention,” said Tammy Findlay, an associate professor of Canadian studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax.
“We focus on demand and send parents out into the marketplace to fill their needs. That’s not working,” said Findlay, addressing the provincial government’s economic development committee Thursday. “We need supplyside funding that invests in and builds the services so that parents can access them.”
Findlay and colleague James Sawler, an associate pro- fessor of economics, both espoused the advantages of a public child-care system over private for-profit services.
“For-profit services, their locations, their fees are entirely up to the private provider,” Findlay said. “We as a community have no control over whether those services are located in places where they are needed. They are often located in affluent areas. They have major differences in terms of the wages provided for the early childhood educators.
Sawler said there are inefficiencies in private systems with respect to the use of resources.
“You are looking at marketing, you are looking at promotions,” he said.
“These are funds that are not going directly to educating children, where, in a public system, they do. There are issues involving regulation. If you are going to ensure quality, there is a big difference in oversight of a system that has been designed and implemented publicly than to have a body overseeing a hodgepodge of private enterprises .”
Sawler said a publicly funded system would provide uniform programs.
“How is a parent supposed to know and judge whether the particular private organization that they are sending their kid to is as high-quality as the one down the street or the one across town? If you have a guaranteed system that is publicly created, the government is doing that for them.”
The professors and representatives of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development were on the same page when it came to the benefits of early education.
“There’s a direct correlation to economic prosperity,” Cathy Montreuil, the deputy education minister, said of early childhood education. “Children get a headstart on a productive future. Families are better supported. Access to affordable and quality daycare means families have the means to meet the care needs that best suit them, whether it is to stay at home with their child or place them in child care so that they may return to the workforce.”
Most caregivers and childhood educators are women, so public early childhood education creates better jobs for women, particularly in rural areas where opportunities may be limited, Montreuil said.
“Canadian economists calculate the cost-to-benefit ratio at between $2 and $7 for every dollar invested,” Montreuil said.
In 1997, Quebec’s Educational Childcare Act initiated a low-fee universal program. Today, all Quebec parents, regardless of their employment, marital or income status, have access to lowcost spaces for their preschool children aged five and under.
“Before Quebec introduced their plan, Quebec had the lowest rate of female workforce participation in the country,” Sawler said, citing a study by economist Pierre Fortin. “Now they have the highest rate. He found that for every dollar Quebec put into early childhood education, they got $1.05 back. The federal government got an extra 45 cents. That was just a bonus.”