Earlier this month, the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women heard testimony about the impact of the federal government’s $10-a-day child care program on Canada’s child care entrepreneurs. The testimony came as part of the committee’s study on women’s economic empowerment, which has examined a wide range of issues impacting women.
The Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario (ADCO) represents independent licensed child-care centres, both commercial and not-for-profit in Ontario. Independent licensed child-care centres are those that are not owned or operated by a municipality, school board, or any other public sector organization, or by a national multi-service agency such as a YMCA. As ADCO’s executive director, I appreciated the opportunity to bring forward the challenges so many of our members are facing as a result of the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program (CWELCC). It’s a complicated story that parents are just beginning to understand.
Canada’s licensed child-care sector has its roots in women’s entrepreneurship. Long before there were government programs or large institutions devoted to child care, there were visionary women who recognized that high-quality child care was essential to women’s equality in the workforce. Many of them started their own licensed child care centres to address very specific needs in their own communities. While most have long since retired or passed on, those of us who were lucky enough to have known some of these early pioneers couldn’t help but be inspired by their passion for their work and their heartfelt commitment to the families they served and the staff they employed.
Their successors, many of them the daughters, sons, and proteges of these early pioneers, are no less passionate and no less committed. Each of their enterprises is as unique as the neighborhood it serves. These enterprises contribute to the well-being of Canadian families and the enrichment of Canadian society in innumerable ways.
Yet, these are the very centres the CWELCC program (marketed as $10-a-day child care) seems designed to eliminate. The formula the federal government uses to determine the funding each province and territory receives for the program is flawed. So are the agreements that dictate how they can use this funding. They not only limit the expansion of licensed child care centres run as small businesses, they also make it difficult for both commercial and not-for-profit centres to survive. So far, six Canadian provinces have renegotiated their agreements. It hasn’t been enough to stop the bleeding.
Bill C-35, the Canada Early Learning and Child Care Act, will make the CWELCC program permanent. It will exacerbate Canada’s child care challenges. It specifically articulates that funding should be directed to public and not-for-profit providers. The Senate committee that examined Bill C-35 took this one step further, recommending that future provincial and territorial Agreements focus on providing funding for a public early learning and child-care system.
Where does that leave the thousands of private licensed child-care centres, both commercial and not-for-profit, that having signed onto the federal program and are now almost completely dependent on it? The Senate didn’t say. Nor have any of our elected leaders at the federal or provincial levels.
So, we have a sector of the economy that was largely created by women and is essential to women’s equality in the workforce. It is one of the only economic sectors in the country where women have always been fairly represented as owners and managers, yet it is not only being undervalued by government, but targeted for replacement by a government-run system.
However, there is no evidence that any future federal, provincial, or territorial government actually could successfully replace the existing network of private sector child-care centres with government-run facilities within a reasonable time frame or at a cost that taxpayers could be expected to bear. And there’s no guarantee that parents would be content with the mediocrity, lack of choice, and cost increases that would inevitably accompany such a system.
So where do we go next?
The current federal government doesn’t seem to have a plan to fix the obvious flaws in the CWELCC program. Even if it did, the federal government likely isn’t well-suited to this task. That’s why child care has traditionally been a matter of provincial and territorial jurisdiction.
To fix what ails the CWELCC program would require the federal government take a step back in terms of directing child-care policy. Elected officials in Canada’s provincial and territorial governments would need to step up and re-establish their leadership role. They’d also need to see leadership as something other than just pushing for more federal money. More importantly, parents would have to demand that they do.
So far, parents aren’t there yet.
