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Canada has begun to make a habit of garnering international criticism and low rankings on women's rights and the "gender gap," poverty and inequality, treatment of indigenous people, the environment and &em; most recently &em; provision for young children. In December, a UNICEF report card on early childhood education and child care ranked Canada last among 25 developed nations; we shockingly met only one of 10 minimum benchmarks assessing quality and access.
Canada's dismal ranking motivated the UN agency to call for swift ameliorative action.
With the federal budget fast approaching, this message should not go unheeded.
The economic downturn makes well-designed public investment in children and families more important than ever.
UNICEF observed that early childhood education and child care has huge potential to enhance children's well-being and development with significant long-term social and economic returns. Most people &em; certainly most parents &em; would agree that participation in high quality early childhood education is an opportunity that shouldn't be missed by children once they've turned about 2 1/2 years of age.
UNICEF notes that in Canada "underinvestment limits the potential to ensure that the child-care transition is good for our children."
As child development research points out, there is little value in services that fall below recognized quality thresholds. Indeed, poor quality may even be harmful, especially for babies and children at risk.
The importance of ensuring that child care is high quality as well as accessible cannot be emphasized enough.
But research in economics and social policy shows that public investment in child care is also a key strategy for responding to immediate economic challenges and ensuring long-term societal prosperity.
Child care promotes economic stimulus through job creation, parents' labour-force participation, higher government tax revenues, enhanced local economic activity, poverty reduction and lower social program costs producing high multiplicative economic returns.
As families experience job and resource loss in a deepening recession, access to child care is even more imperative.
A robust anti-poverty strategy is about much more than child care but cannot be effective without access to early childhood education and child care programs.
Good child care allows female single parents &em; many poor and unlikely to have the cash for user fees for child care of any kind &em; to seek further education, train for work, get decent jobs and accept job promotions.
The incidence of single mothers living below the poverty line in Quebec dropped substantially as universal access to regulated child care spread. Child care also helps families with two working parents to improve their economic stability and income at a time of insecure employment and stagnating wages.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is asking for prebudget advice on "measures to stimulate economic activity" and "steps beyond short-term stimulus to ensure that the Canadian economy remains internationally competitive." Well-designed early childhood programs are a good fit with both immediate stimulus and a prosperous Canada in the long term.
This month's federal budget provides an opportunity to begin mending Canada's reputation by getting started on early childhood education and child care.
We offer Flaherty three recommendations:
Commit to new earmarked early childhood education dollars now. Pledge to transfer funds to be spent according to previous federal/provincial terms until a long-term policy framework is in place. Additionally, include expansion and improvement of early learning facilities in new infrastructure programs.
Reform the Universal Child Care Benefit so that funds can be used more effectively. Redirect the $2.5 billion annual expenditure to enrich child benefits for families who need income most, and for the first phase of a national early learning program. The November Economic and Fiscal Statement announced "reviews of departmental spending to ensure that programs are achieving their intended results..." There are no data that show the child-care benefit is meeting its objective of helping families "balance work and family life by supporting their child-care choices."
Start designing a robust national early childhood education and child-care policy framework. This policy development should be based on best evidence, consistent with roles and responsibilities inherent in Canadian federalism and complemented by improved parental leave and child benefits. Substantial public spending is fundamental for high quality and access in early childhood education &em; but spending money without a strong policy framework and first-rate planning is poor policy practice.
The interests of social activists who advocate for children, women and families converge in early learning with the concerns of economic strategists.
Smart 21st-century governments know that investing in early childhood education and child care is one of the best economic decisions they can make and that not doing so is bad economics.
Short, medium and long-term &em; Canada can't work without child care.
- reprinted from The Toronto Star