EXCERPTS
Re: On Childcare, Don’t Look To Quebec, Michel Kelly-Gagnon and Yanick Labrie, July 30.
Reams of research shows that the authors’ main point — it’s better to give public childcare money to parents, rather than funding services — is wrong.
A report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation & Development summarizes this: “Direct public funding of services brings, in the majority of countries reviewed, more effective control, advantages of scale, better national quality, more effective training for educators and a higher degree of equity in access and participation than consumer subsidy models.”
The shift to funding services globally was the most significant Quebec childcare policy change in the 1990s and fundamental to affordability, as it has been in other countries. Thus, a Canada-wide childcare program is best based on building — over time — a system of affordable, quality services supported directly by public funding. This isn’t the only policy needed to ensure high quality and equity in child care, but from everything we know it’s impossible without it.
- Martha Friendly, Toronto.