Keep the Child Care Promise: Q & A
Why is more public investment needed in child care – and what is currently at risk?
- In order to continue the progress of the $10aDay child care plan, governments must increase public funding to meet the real cost of operating high-quality programs and to expand the availability of licensed child care under the $10aDay child care system.
- Without increased federal investment in child care, parent fees will rise, wait lists will get longer, and the child care sector will be thrown back into turmoil. In a cost-of-living crisis, families rely on affordable child care — and they cannot afford this level of uncertainty.
- Moreover, the quality of child care programs is in jeopardy, the problem of recruiting and retaining qualified educators will worsen, and programs will close.
Why do we need a publicly funded child care system?
- When the federal, provincial and territorial governments agreed to the federal $10aDay early learning and child care plan in 2021, they also agreed to assume primary responsibility for funding licensed child care for children 0-5. This laid the foundation for building a system of child care that could be improved over time without parents having to continually pay higher and higher fees.
- Public funding of early learning and child care, just like public funding of public education, brings down barriers to access making it possible for children of all families of all income levels to learn together in quality environments.
Can Canada afford a publicly funded child care system, especially in times of economic uncertainty?
- A large public investment is needed to build a high quality system of low-fee early learning and child care, but many studies have shown that this investment yields high returns, including many economic benefits for Canada.
- When child care is publicly funded, more families have access to programs and this allows more parents, especially mothers, to participate more fully in the paid labour force. More paid work helps families live more affordably. Also, when more people are employed, governments revenues also go up allowing them to spend more for the benefit of everyone.
- It is especially important in the current times of uncertainty that employment levels don’t drop, and that new areas of economic activity and growth be supported. Child care is essential social and economic infrastructure.
Should higher income families not pay more for child care?
- As the $10aDay child care plan reaches the end of its first five years, some governments are saying that the only way to make the program sustainable for governments is to make parents pay higher fees. Some are considering a fee system based on family income as a way to increase parent fee revenue.
- A family income tested fee system would be a major reversal of the promise by governments to reduce parent fees and cap them at an average of $10aDay. For most families, it would mean a roll back of the life-changing fee reductions from 2021.
- Also, moving to a family income-tested fee system would destabilize the child care sector, because providers of the service would be able to keep their doors open only if they could find enough parents able to pay higher fees.
- Moving to a family income-tested fee system puts Canada at risk of other reversals in child care policy. For example, it is a step towards the deregulation of fees: that is, allowing providers to set their fees. Families would then be income-tested for subsidies. In other words, we would be back to how things were before the start of the $10aDay program: very high fees and relatively few families qualifying for sufficient levels of subsidy to make programs affordable.
- It is important to note that capping fees at an average of $10aDay for everyone is equitable, as long as low-income families are eligible for even lower parent fees. This is now the case everywhere in Canada except Alberta and Quebec. Additionally, the tax system in Canada requires higher income families to pay proportionately higher income tax. Therefore, higher income families are already contributing more to Canada’s $10aDay child care program.