This budget must once and for all tackle child care

All of the political rhetoric from the Trudeau government, as well as the political tea leaves, are pointing toward the government using the upcoming federal budget to finally do something about a national daycare standard.

On Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said again that proper child care will be essential in the post-pandemic economic recovery. At a media conference, he said: “What we’re seeing is that people have finally understood what the Liberal Party has long known, that child care is not simply a social argument or a social program, it’s fundamentally an economic program. Getting more women into the workforce, allowing families to not have to make impossible choices between having another child or staying in the workforce — these are things good for the economy.”

He is right. Just ask working families in Quebec, which has its own universal child-care system. Economists, social scientists, academics and child development advocates have been saying the same thing for years. And previous Liberal leaders have recognized that and pledged to establish child care and early learning as a national priority.

Understanding why that has not happened is instructive. Jurisdictional conflict is a key reason. Child care and education are provincial responsibilities, and premiers are famous for wanting more money without any strings attached.

The lack of a harmonized approach has led to further entrenchment of the status quo in which Ottawa gives child-care subsidy money directly to families, but doesn’t have the authority to build a more robust system with adequate supply and quality standards. That is up to the provinces, and they — by and large — haven’t done that. Nibbling around the edges has not worked. Canada, and Ontario, needs a more holistic and robust approach. So what does that look like?

Armine Yalnizyan, economist and Atkinson Foundation Fellow on the Future of Workers, said in an interview with Ctvnews.ca: “We are at the proverbial fork in the road, where you could pour money into a marketplace, you can add money and stir, and what you get is more of what we’ve got, which is market failure. Or, you could add money and actually build quality access and affordability.”

In a memo to Liberal cabinet members, Yalnizyan and her colleagues wrote: “A federal plan needs to ensure enough money to stabilize capacity in early learning and child care, and tie transfers to two key outcomes: reducing user costs and improving the quality and quantity of care, which includes ensuring decent work for child-care workers.”

That is a tall order. What it boils down to is that families need unfettered access to affordable, quality care, and that spells regulated care. It’s not enough just to pour money into care in general if there are not clear markers on quality, including paying caregivers a living wage.

Here, again, is Yalnizyan to CTV: “Most parents have to rely on unregulated care because there’s no regulated care that they can afford that’s nearby. So what does unregulated care look like? Huge amounts of turnover. It’s usually some mom that’s offering care or some grandma that is offering care down the street. It’s not bad care, don’t get me wrong, but to build up more of that is craziness on stilts.”

That is the scale of the challenge for Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and her colleagues. We will not have a sustainable solid recovery unless women regain the ground they have lost in the pandemic. And that demands, finally, a child-care system to help Canadian families do what they need to do. This budget has to deliver.