[ Canada’s launch of a national child care system shows what it
takes to improve child care across a country]
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WHAT AMERICA CAN LEARN FROM CANADA’S NEW ‘$10 A DAY’ CHILD CARE
SYSTEM  
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Jackie Mader
September 23, 2023
The Hechinger Report
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_ Canada’s launch of a national child care system shows what it
takes to improve child care across a country _

A child plays in a classroom at Collingwood Neighborhood House in
Vancouver, Canada, where child care costs $10 a day., Credit: Jackie
Mader/The Hechinger Report

 

GIBSONS, British Columbia — Two years ago, Marisol Petersen’s
family was paying more than $1,200 a month for her son to attend child
care in this small, coastal town about 20 miles across the Howe Sound
from Vancouver. Despite the cost, which made it hard to put any money
in savings, she felt lucky to even have a spot.

Then, in September 2022, the family experienced a dramatic shift in
fortune. They were notified that there was a spot for them in a nearby
child care center that had recently signed on to a government-led
initiative to lower parent fees to just $10 a day. “It’s like I
won the lottery,” Petersen said. “I got into child care and a
‘$10 a Day’ site.”

At the new center, the Huckleberry Coast Child Care Society,
Petersen’s fees are capped at $200 a month. Without that reduction
in fees, Petersen, who works as a social planner for the city of
Vancouver, said her family would “be in massive trouble.”

 

The Huckleberry Coast Child Care Society is a small, parent-run child
care program that offers child care for $10 a day. Credit: Jackie
Mader/The Hechinger Report

The “$10 a Day” child care initiative, as it’s known in British
Columbia, has been life-changing for parents. In the five years since
it launched, it has also provided some financial stability for child
care programs in the province, which now receive operating funds
directly from the government instead of relying solely on family-paid
tuition.

This idea — that parents should pay an average of $10 a day for
child care and that public funds should underwrite child care programs
— is now a cornerstone of a new national child care system rolling
out across the country.

During the pandemic, Canada, like the United States, was forced to
grapple with the fact that its already unsustainable child care system
was on the brink of collapse. In 2021, the country’s leaders
committed $30 billion
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$24 billion in U.S. dollars) over five years to the country’s first
federally-funded child care system — borrowing ideas from a
longstanding government-funded program in the province of Quebec as
well as from British Columbia’s $10 a Day program. The new
Canada-wide system was “very much situated in the context of
economic recovery,” said Morna Ballantyne, executive director of
Child Care Now, an advocacy association in Canada.

Collingwood Neighborhood House was one of the first $10 a Day sites in
Vancouver. When the new rates were announced, the demand from parents
was so high, the program had to hire an enrollment
manager. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report

Canada’s national system is nowhere near finished and is hardly
perfect; there are staffing shortages in many parts of the country and
still far too few seats available for children. But the new national
initiative, known as “Canada-wide,” will bring Canada closer to
joining the ranks of countries like Finland, Sweden and Iceland, long
lauded for providing robust federal support for child care.

As American child care experts call for more federal investment to
salvage a struggling industry, Canada’s experience may hold the most
relevant lessons on how to make universal child care palatable to
politicians and how to design a program to meet the needs of a
diverse, geographically sprawling nation. With its new system, Canada
has had to strike a balance between upholding the federal vision and
allowing local autonomy over details, and between addressing the
financial burden for parents while determining how to directly fund
child care programs to ensure their stability.

“Canada shows that transformative child care reform is possible,”
said Elliot Haspel, director of climate and young children at Capita,
an international think tank, and the author of “Crawling Behind:
America’s Childcare Crisis and How to Fix It.” “I don’t think
we can copy and paste what the advocates up there did. But I think
there’s some real lessons in thinking about messaging of child care
and what’s the actual policy.”

Any way you look at it, America’s child care system is in crisis.
After years of underinvestment, and an end to pandemic-era aid,
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struggling. Child care teachers have fled for higher paying jobs
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parents face years-long wait lists
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and families face insurmountable costs
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for mediocre care [[link removed]]. 

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A child plays at the Terry Tayler location of Collingwood Neighborhood
House in southeast Vancouver. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger
Report

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A garden cared for by children and their teachers sits in the
playground at the Heritage Park Child Care Centre in British
Columbia. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report

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Children play in their classroom at the Huckleberry Coast Child Care
Society in British Columbia. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger
Report

The last major effort to significantly expand federal funding of child
care in the U.S. — a proposal in President Joseph Biden’s Build
Back Better legislation in 2021 — was dropped from the final version
of the act. Legislation introduced earlier this year
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would have provided $10-a-day child care to many American families
failed to progress. Although greater investment in child care has
some bipartisan support
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the U.S., many lawmakers have balked at the cost
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Some continue to say the government should have no place in child
care, arguing that it is a private responsibility
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Others suggest that universal access to child care is a communist
policy, or that mothers should always stay home with their children.
That’s in spite of the fact that America relies on working parents
to keep schools
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many services open.

In Canada, experts and advocates were “very effective at conveying
the idea that child care is an important part of the overall
well-being of the province and the nation,” Haspel added. “They
hammered it home over and over and over again.”

The percent share of GDP that the United States spent on early
childhood between 2009 and 2019 has remained stagnant at an average of
just 0.34% every year. In comparison, the average for OECD countries
has been 0.67% during this period.

The new national system passed Parliament as part of the nation’s
budget in June 2021 and has been rolling out over the past two years.
Participation is voluntary for provinces and territories. But all have
signed on to access the federal dollars, which are presently given
with no requirement that provinces invest their own money. Eventually,
Canadian officials hope to achieve a 50/50 cost share with provinces
and territories
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but no money was required at the onset of the initiative. (America, in
contrast, requires
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to match funds for its current federal program aimed at lowering costs
for low-income families.)

Each province or territory has control over many of the details
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the Canada-wide program, like setting annual goals for expanding child
care spots and early educator pay scales, as well as deciding whether
for-profit centers are included in their system. Money flows to the
provincial governments, which then have their own systems for
providing funding directly to the child care programs. By 2026
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the country intends for Canada-wide to be universal in fact as well as
name — with 250,000
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spots and parents paying no more than an average of $10 a day for
care.

Children read outside at Heritage Park Child Care
Centre. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report

While the system’s biggest effects likely won’t be seen until it
expands, there are signs of progress. Nationwide, nearly half
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the provinces and territories offer regulated child care for an
average of $10 a day, or less. In Newfoundland and Labrador, the
federal funds have also supported the creation of a new, full-day,
year-round pre-K pilot program
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In New Brunswick, the province upped early childhood educator
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In British Columbia the federal infusion of funds has bolstered the
work the province was already doing to bring more public funding into
the child care industry. The province used the federal money it
received to pay for 1,271 child care spaces between 2021 and 2022.

Child care programs say there are benefits to having access to more
public funds. At Huckleberry, the program Marisol Petersen’s son
attends in Gibsons, the board of directors saw signing onto the
province’s $10 a Day plan as an opportunity to lower fees for
parents without having to also lower wages for teachers. Huckleberry
was also able to get $32,000 in additional funding from the province
to hire a program manager to oversee budgets and support daily
operations.

About 68 miles east of Gibsons in Mission, a town of about 39,000 in
Canada’s bucolic Fraser Valley, child care provider Lorraine Trulsen
said $10 a Day has provided much-needed stability. Before joining the
provincial initiative, she was begging families to refer others to her
program, the Heritage Park Childcare Centre, even offering half off a
month of care. Although her tuition, which cost between $650 and $850
a month, was lower than that of centers closer to Vancouver, “it was
a struggle to get full,” Trulsen said. Five years after becoming a
pilot program for $10 a Day, Trulsen has a three-year wait list. Many
of her parents cried when Trulsen announced her new, lower rate. Some
couples decided they could have more children, she added, knowing they
could now afford care. 

Children and their teachers take a walk in southeast Vancouver,
outside Collingwood Neighborhood House’s Terry Tayler
location. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report

The publicly-supported initiative in British Columbia, “has given us
a feeling of security,” Trulsen said. “We’ve actually never been
more financially stable than we are right now.”

Despite Canada’s progress and growing support for the national,
low-cost child care plan, the country’s pain points in
Canada-wide’s rollout show there’s no quick way to make child care
a public, federally-funded service, especially for countries that are
late to the game. For example, in Canada, non-licensed, home-based
providers have been left out of the system, as have other, more
informal kinds of care.

About one-third
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Canada’s children are cared for by either a relative other than
their parent or by a non-relative in a home, for example. Some
provinces plan to tweak
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versions of Canada-wide to include more forms of child care in the
future, but that is not the case across the country. “We are very
concerned that the current plan is not equitable,” said Andrea
Mrozek, a senior fellow with the Ottawa-based think tank, Cardus.
“Billions and billions are being poured into a system that really
helps the few,” she added.

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The Heritage Park Child Care Centre prioritizes outside play in its
large playground. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report

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Lorraine Trulsen, owner of the Heritage Park Child Care Centre,
prepares materials for children at her program in British
Columbia. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report

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Children at Heritage Park Child Care Centre set up a “bug hotel”
in their outdoor play space. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger
Report

And even some of the programs that have been the biggest beneficiaries
of the child care expansion are still struggling with funding.
Provinces and territories are financially supporting the budgets of
child care programs at levels the programs say are too low. In many
cases, the governments subsidize families’ costs, but fail to
approve enough new money for child care programs that would allow them
to raise teacher salaries. For example, earlier this year, British
Columbia rejected a request from Huckleberry for a funding increase
that would have raised teacher wages and provided employment benefits
for the center’s small staff of two full-time and two part-time
teachers.

The Esprit Daycare Centre near Huckleberry also asked program
officials in British Columbia for additional funds so it could raise
wages. The request was denied. Last year Esprit lost several staff
members to a public early learning program that pays more. “The
staffing has been the issue,” said Jennifer Braun, manager of
Esprit. “Finding enough coverage here is like a unicorn.” 

In some provinces, families’ costs were cut dramatically long before
many programs had the stability and staffing to handle the subsequent
enrollment surge. And while some provinces have upped educator wages
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an attempt to attract and keep teachers, others have been slower to
make progress.

“I feel like the government is doing things in the wrong order,”
said Trulsen, in Mission. “We’re creating spaces and we can’t
find staff. We can’t find staff because we can’t offer decent
living wages. So round and round you go.”

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Plants sit outside in a playground at Collingwood Neighborhood House
in Vancouver. The child care program emphasizes time outside,
including gardening. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report

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A teacher reads to children at the Terry Tayler location of
Collingwood Neighborhood House in Vancouver. Credit: Jackie
Mader/The Hechinger Report

Canadian experts say their country’s experience has shown what to
do, as well as what not to do, to create transformational change in
the child care industry. Some American policy makers have proposed
addressing the child care crisis here by sending more money to parents
or upping tax benefits, rather than providing direct funding to child
care programs. Canadian experts who have seen their system’s roll
out are wary of such methods. “It’s absolutely clear that if you
want to have a childcare system, you can’t do it only by giving
money to the parents, you have to make sure that you have the
supply,” said Martha Friendly, executive director of the
Canadian-based nonprofit Childcare Resource and Research Unit, who
previously worked on child care policy in the United States.

 “If you look at other countries, that’s the way they do it, they
fund the operations.” Of most importance, said Friendly, is that
countries address affordability, workforce and supply at the same
time. “If you want to have a child care system that’s stable …
You need to do all these things at the same time, because they’re
interlinked,” she said.

A child plays at the Esprit Daycare Centre in Gibsons, British
Columbia Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report

In the U.S., some states are likely to balk at the idea of following
in the steps of Canada and Scandinavia and setting up a federal
“system” of care. Allowing autonomy at a state level is an aspect
of Canada’s model America might adopt, said Gordon Cleveland,
associate professor emeritus at the University of Toronto Scarborough.
“But there also has to be a very strong overall concept,” he said,
such as setting goals for parent rates, program expansion or educator
wages.

Such a system would be costly: one proposal
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a universal child care system by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has also
proposed $10 a day child care
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estimated the price at $700 billion over 10 years. In Canada, some
child care programs have opted out due, in part, due to concern that
they won’t have as much autonomy over their operations
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And because unlicensed, informal care is popular in America, and the
majority of the country’s young children are in non-center-based
care, a system focused on formal programs, like Canada’s, could be a
point of contention here as well.

Messaging in support of universal child care in the United States will
likely need to differ from Canada’s. While it might seem
counterintuitive, Haspel believes expanded government spending on
child care should be tied to giving American families flexibility to
choose and pursue their own destinies. “It’s about family
freedom,” he said. “The number of children you can have, where you
choose to live. The time you get to spend with your children should
not be determined by the availability or lack thereof of affordable
child care, yet for far too many families, it is.”

_Jackie Mader covers early childhood education and writes the early ed
newsletter. In her ten years at Hechinger, she has covered a range of
topics including teacher preparation, special education and rural
schools. She previously worked as a special education teacher in
Charlotte, North Carolina, and trained new teachers in Mississippi._

_This story about subsidized child care
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produced by _The Hechinger Report [[link removed]]_, a
nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and
innovation in education. Sign up for the __Hechinger newsletter_
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