Excerpts
Relying on the private sector can make sense in competitive markets. The selfish pursuit of profit is counterbalanced by the force of competition, so that results may be socially positive.
But some pursuits don’t work well when dominated by private interests; early learning and child care is one of them. The counterbalance of competition isn’t there and guardrails need to be established to ensure socially positive results. Child care in Canada already has substantial amounts of for-profit child care – more than half of the providers in a majority of provinces are commercial operators. The Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program has declared that child care is more like education and less like manufacturing cars, so we should bend the curve back towards non-profit and public child care. The care of children while parents work and study is of intense public interest and governments need to make sure it is done well.
In the last 5 years, we made a good start in transforming Canada’s child care system. Much lower fees, expanded services, new funding systems, higher wages for educators. Nearly a million children benefitting from better access to affordable child care.
The provinces and territories signed agreements setting up guardrails about how the new child care system should be developed – expansion prioritizing vulnerable and underserved families, focus on improving staff wages and conditions to enable recruitment and retention, emphasis on expansion of not-for-profit and public services to prioritize quality and service stability, fees dropping to an average of $10 a day.
But now, if rumours are right, many provincial and territorial ministers responsible for early learning and child care want to get rid of many guardrails. And If they don’t get what they want, they might pull out entirely! They want “flexibility” – where flexibility is code for getting rid of any of the guardrails these provinces and territories don’t like. The biggest guardrails are restrictions on the percent of expansion that takes place in for-profit operations, restrictions on the amount of profit that can be earned, and prioritization of expansion in vulnerable and underserved communities. The for-profit lobbyists don’t like these guardrails. But they are important if we want a stable high quality child care system that serves those in need and everyone else.
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Federal, provincial and territorial ministers need to find more operating money for building the system, and capital money for expansion, but keep guardrails in place in new Action Plans. Ontario was able to double its kindergarten capacity in five years in the early 2000s. That same kind of public effort should go into doubling child care capacity now. Parents and children will thank you for building on a sound foundation rather than on sand.