For women, kids and families we need universal child care

Our child care crisis is largely a product of progress in gender equality, particularly since the 1950s when only 24 per cent of women worked outside the home, according to StatsCan. As of 2014, the labour force participation for women hit 82 per cent, compared to 91 per cent for men. The more women who work, the more child care is needed but more women in the workforce also means more people paying income taxes and money in the economy.

A provincial study on Ontario's gender pay gap launched in 2014 found women earn 29 per cent less than men on average, and the best way to reduce that is through investing in child care. (A 2017 StatsCan report found "the gender employment gap is greater in [cities] with high daycare fees.")

Experts have also estimated every tax dollar spent on child care would add $2.47 to the Ontario economy. That might be just a theory in Ontario, but we've seen it in practice in Quebec, where subsidized care costs a fraction of what it does in other provinces.

Daycare in Quebec

Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz recently explained that Quebec's universal child care program has increased the "prime-age female workforce" from 74 per cent to 87 per cent over its two decades. "The provincial government identified barriers that were keeping women out of the workforce and they acted to reduce them," Poloz said, adding that if Quebec's participation rate was matched countrywide, it would add around 300,000 women to the workforce.

Ontario promises free daycare ahead of pivotal election

6 years ago

Duration 4:04

The Quebec system is by no means perfect. It's gone from $5 a day in 1997 to today's sliding scale between $7.75 and $21.20 depending on income. But Montreal's $168 a month average for infant care is still 10 times (!) cheaper than in Toronto.

It's also become so popular that, in order to meet demand, the government offered tax credits for full-fee private garderies, which have been criticized for providing inadequate care to disproportionately lower-income children compared to the publicly funded Centres de la petite enfance. So obviously, there is room for improvement. This issue would not be encountered by Ontario's free universal program but it, in turn, will lacksupport for more expensive infant and toddler care. Perhaps an answer lies in some sort of synthesis of the two provincial programs.

There's one other anti-daycare argument that often crops up: that it's harmful to kids who'd be better off staying at home with their moms. (Never dads, funny that.) This is about more than economics, after all it's our children.

Well, over the years, early childhood educators helped our son develop his physical and cognitive abilities using specialized teaching techniques. Having never parented before, we just winged it on the evenings and weekends, focusing on having fun. (Daycare even helped with his toilet-training, which was very much appreciated.) Though we'd decided early on to have just one child, we were worried about the purported potential for only children to be selfish and self-absorbed. We needn't have. The daycare experience taught our son emotional intelligence as he's navigated social groupings while having older kids to look up to and younger ones to look out for.

Daycare not only allowed us to develop careers, but also helped us raise a son who is smart and empathetic, even though it came at a financially punishing cost for our young family. That's an important piece of this puzzle and why we need universal child care.

Joshua Ostroff is a writer and editor raising an eight-year-old breakdancer in Toronto. He covers everything from politics to pop culture to parenting. He also loves alliteration.