Excerpts
Saskatchewan built its child care system on the idea that children come before profits. That principle is now being tested by Saskatchewan’s renewed child care agreement with Ottawa.
The Canada-Saskatchewan child care agreement was extended in November for five more years, and while we haven’t seen details yet, comments by Saskatchewan Minister of Education Everett Hindley suggest that the deal will allow for the expansion of for-profit child care provision within the province. In his words, “there would be some public dollars in the form of grants available to for-profit centres.”
This may sound minor, but it is a worrying departure that should concern all advocates for a quality, affordable and accessible child care service in the province.
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This expansion of for-profit spaces has occurred despite the federal government’s stated intention that new spaces created under CWELCC should be primarily not-for-profit. The insistence on non-profit providers is not ideological; it is based on years of empirical evidence demonstrating again and again that non-profit child care providers deliver higher quality care and can produce better child development outcomes.
These quality differences are closely tied to labour practices. Non-profit providers tend to hire better-trained staff, pay higher wages, and invest in more professional development, which supports a stronger culture of quality.
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The majority of corporate child care chains that are already prevalent across the country are backed by private equity—a controversial business model where investors “buy in order to sell,” often once the acquired company is loaded up with debt and/or stripped for parts. Child care centres operating under the direction of private equity will, by necessity, be even more focused on delivering profits to investors than they will be in delivering quality care to children.
The establishment of such chains in Saskatchewan would also create a powerful political lobby in the province that would seek to advance its own economic interests. In other provinces, the private child care industry has successfully lobbied to reduce inspections and standards of care. The National Advocacy Council on Private Childcare—the for-profit child care providers industry association—explicitly opposes the current $10-per-day universal child care system, advocating instead for a “free market” approach that would means-test fees by income, with subsidies sent directly to families rather than the universal capped fee approach.
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