Excerpts from the report
Starting in 2001/02, agreements between the federal government and provincial and territorial governments other than Quebec have resulted in new federal transfers to improve and expand access to quality, affordable child care and other Early Childhood Development (ECD) services across Canada. In November 2004, the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada undertook this Making the Connections project to support communities and governments in their analysis and discussions of child care policy and funding under these agreements. To facilitate this dialogue, we began by developing tools and resources to explain the federal transfers and to highlight the importance of key child care system indicators and comprehensive child care planning. While the child care community and others promote an accountability framework for federal transfers that includes legislated standards, audited information and reporting to Parliaments/Legislatures, the recent Federal/Provincial/Territorial (FPT) agreements propose that accountability can be addressed solely through commitments by governments to provide clear annual public reporting that allows the public to track progress on child care and other ECD services. In this report, we analyze the extent to which the public reports released to date by governments demonstrate that the FPT Agreement commitments have been met. We base our analysis on the requirements set out in the agreements, as well as on the public performance reporting recommendations of the Public Sector Accounting Board (PSAB). Our project findings show that few governments have clear public reporting that allows the public to easily track progress throughout the required reporting period (2000/01 through 2005/06). None meet all of the performance and reporting requirements outlined in the FPT Agreements. This central finding is highlighted by the fact that of the 13 jurisdictions reviewed, 8 are missing reports for one or more of the required years so the public cannot track all of the federal transfers and total investments in child care services.