Ottawa’s plan for child care a rare opportunity

Thanks to Chrystia Freeland’s first budget, Canada is a big step closer toward something we should already have — universally affordable and quality child care.

For 35 years governments have been talking about it, but no best intention or high-level plan has ever brought us this far down the road, to a point where $10-a-day child care could actually become a reality.

Consider all the winners if the government’s plan works. Parents who are accustomed to paying thousands more will save that money and can use it in ways that will benefit their lives and the economy. As the Quebec model has clearly shown, affordable care will attract countless women into the workforce, which is a win for employers. A larger workforce means more economic growth, which is essential to help Canada recover from the pandemic and also grow the economy to pay the bills for an aging population in need of support and services.

Many still make the mistake of referring to child care as strictly a social service. In that it allows more women to work who want to and enriches their lives, it is, but it is much more. There is a mountain of research to show that public spending on child care more than pays for itself. It is as much economic as social policy.

But even with the massive federal financial commitment of $30 billion over five years, this plan could still fail. That is because to succeed it requires a historic degree of buy-in and co-operation from provincial governments.

Jennifer Robson, an associate professor of political management at Carleton University who specializes in household finances and public policy, explained it this way in an interview with macleans.ca: “It doesn’t matter in a sense how many dollars the feds put on the table, they are not constitutionally in charge of the regulation of child care in Canada. A real downside is that it risks provoking an interjurisdictional dispute where the feds are trying to make the money conditional on certain kinds of policy directions and the provinces are saying ‘Screw you, this is my area, just hand over the money, please.’ ”

Consider the reaction of the Ontario government, represented by Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy. He criticized the budget for not including new health transfers, not providing more vaccine supply, not improving the federal sickness benefit (in fact it did). He said not one word about child care. Education Minister Stephen Lecce was even worse, welcoming more investment but rejecting any strings attached.

Traditionally, Ottawa provides assistance to help families with child care, and the province provides the space. But in Ontario, successive governments have not done their share to increase capacity and ensure quality. The Wynne government had a plan to do some of that, but the Ford government killed it.

If this provincial government really saw the benefit in accessible quality child care, it would have done something on the supply side by now, and it has not, so Ottawa is going to have to find a way. Maybe there is a deal to be made on increasing health transfers in exchange for child-care investment.

Freeland has proven herself a skilled negotiator, and she will need to be to seize this opportunity. Barry Forer, an early learning expert at the University of British Columbia, says in a Macleans interview: “I do think crises come and go, so I think this is our shot. If we waited another year or two, I wouldn’t be as hopeful. We have the right government, the right economic conditions, including low interest rates, and the right crisis to point out the importance of adding early learning and child care to the other social goods that everybody accepts as being important to invest in, like health care or education.” Amen.