In June 2023, Members of Parliament unanimously voted in favour of Bill C-35, An Act Respecting Early Learning and Child Care in Canada. In addition to enshrining the principles of a national child care system into federal law, the bill also refers to the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, which includes the rights of all children to access early childhood education and care – abridged as child care for the purposes of this article.
Despite this enshrined human right, many households in Canada are still struggling to access a subsidized child care space under the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) system, otherwise known as “$10-per-day child care.” (MacDonald & Friendly, 2023) A systemic issue preventing wider access stems from the federal government’s reluctance to establish the necessary recommendations and concrete benchmarks to guide the provinces and territories to implement child care as a right for every child.
To fully realize and enact this key piece of legislation, Canada can learn important lessons from the European Commission (EC) in the design of a real, actionable rights-based national child care strategy. Without redesigning a national child care system from scratch, the federal government could template its programming according to the design of the European Child Guarantee (ECG) which supports the expansion of basic rights for marginalized children; and the European Care Strategy, which aims to ensure quality, affordable, and accessible care services across the European Union (EU).
From the European experience, Canadians should develop an understanding of the importance of a federal endorsement of policy and funding practices that most effectively support the expansion of CWELCC; revised federal benchmarks that track child care expansion efforts against child care participation rates instead of child care space creation targets; and federal support for a coordinated approach amongst the provincial and territorial ministries that manage child care, education, healthcare, and housing to support access to multiple basic rights for marginalized children.
While the EC and the Canadian federal government are very different governance models to contrast to, there are still many applicable corollaries. The EC’s model of soft-law governance with EU Member States, for instance, is not entirely dissimilar to the Canadian federal government’s relationship with the provinces and territories within a decentralized federalism. By demonstrating the effectiveness of the EC’s reliance on goal-setting and ‘peer pressure’ between Member States to support change across the European Union, the Government of Canada could emulate these strategies within a federal framework that devolves most child care related powers to the provinces and territories, much like EU member states. (Vanhercke & Read, 2015)
Recommendation: Endorse Policy and Funding Best Practices
The federal government’s high-level vision for CWELCC is laid out in the Multilateral Early Learning and Child Care Framework. This Framework asserts federal, provincial, and territorial governments’ commitment to supporting quality, accessibility, affordability, flexibility, and inclusivity in child care, (Government of Canada, 2022) and has informed the bilateral agreements that the federal government established with the provinces and territories. In addition to reiterating these high-level goals, most of these bilateral agreements require provinces and territories to meet specific child care expansion targets, to reduce child care fees to an average of $10 per day by the end of 2026, and to only fund licensed child care spaces. (Government of Canada, 2024)
Despite the national framework, there has been some variability across bilateral agreements between the federal government and the provinces. For instance, some provinces are held to a child care space creation target, while other provinces are given a coverage rate target, referring to the percentage of children who have access, in theory, to a licensed child care space. Most provinces are required to predominantly or exclusively fund the expansion of non-profit and public child care operators. Alberta and Ontario remain exceptions to this requirement, as both provinces negotiated within their bilateral agreements to instead aggressively fund for-profit child care operators. (Government of Canada, 2024) Beyond these basic and varied requirements, the federal government has refrained from endorsing a more robust set of recommendations based on best practice to support the expansion of CWELCC.
The Federal Secretariat on Early Learning and Child Care carries out policy and research to support the implementation of CWELCC, but the Secretariat’s reports typically describe the achievements of provinces and territories instead of adopting a more critical approach of provinces’ child care expansion efforts against a set of recommended practices and policies. This makes it more difficult for the public and policymakers to identify why there is variability in the accessibility and quality of child care across the country.
This restrained approach by the federal government was likely due to provincial resistance and push back on perceived overreach on child care and education, but in the absence of clear federal directives, provinces and territories will continue to use a mix of poorly designed and ineffective policies. Without federal clarity, provinces have pursued the expansion of for-profit operators and underpaying of child care staff. As a result, provinces and territories have limited accountability without an established standard based on best practice, undermining the objective of establishing child care as a right for all children.
In contrast, the EC’s decision to endorse policy and funding best practices to support the implementation of the ECG supports the success of child care programming across the Union. The objective of the ECG is to ensure that every child in Europe at risk of poverty and social exclusion has access to basic rights, including child care. (The European Commission, n.d.a) These recommendations were intended to help European Union (EU) member states design effective National Action Plans and outline the specific policies and measures that will be implemented to achieve the objectives set out in the ECG.
To establish these recommendations, the EC conducted an analysis of child care provisioning across the EU. This research produced reports and discussion papers that 1) established the current state of child care provisioning across member states, 2) provided concrete policy recommendations to improve child care accessibility, especially for marginalized children, and 3) provided an evaluation of the way member states were using EU funds to support the expansion of child care for marginalized children. (The European Commission, n.d.a)
Notably, the reports went beyond merely describing high-level inclusion goals and member states’ achievements. For example, two notable recommendations included set quotas for children from disadvantaged backgrounds in child care centers, as well as programs to recruit trained Roma assistants to facilitate the participation of Roma children in early childhood education. (Frazer, Guio & Marlier, 2020) These concrete recommendations to support the high-level inclusion goals have been lacking from the Multilateral Early Learning and Child Care Framework in Canada. The reports also did not shy away from identifying specific member states when discussing ineffective policy practices and use of EU funds. Criticism regarding the performance of Bulgaria and Slovenia in making child care accessible to marginalized children was not restrained:
The experiences in Bulgaria and Slovenia illustrate that the availability of services does not always ensure equal enrolment, and that the most vulnerable children may need additional support, even in cases of universal access and means-tested fees. In situations of extreme poverty, as well as significant cultural gaps between families and schools, additional services are both needed and feasible. (Guio, Frazer & Marlier, 2021)
While provinces and territories may bristle at the prospect of being criticized in this way, this evaluation does provide needed public accountability and support for further reform. Federal scrutiny ought to be required when provinces are given freedom for variability in the quality and accessibility of child care within their jurisdictions, especially for marginalized children who would otherwise fall through the cracks without accountability.
Non-profit organizations, including the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, The Childcare Resource and Research Unit, and Child Care Now, a national child care advocacy organization, are already conducting this type of analysis. Notably, Child Care Now has already established “The National Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) Workforce Policy Table” that provided recommendations in 2024 regarding the child care workforce crisis. These recommendations scrutinize not just provincial governments, but the federal government’s performance as well on child care and should be strongly considered by the federal government and provinces to fully realize the CWELCC system. (Child Care Now, 15 October 2024)
Federally endorsed assessments of provinces’ and territories’ performance can be more easily leveraged by the media, advocates, and opposition parties to hold governments accountable when such governments fail to support the expansion of child care, especially for the most marginalized households.
The Canadian federal government could also be used such an endorsement to justify attaching further conditions on federal funding to enact a stronger form of federalism that supports the development of better practices towards achieving child care goals. For example, requiring all provinces and territories, including Ontario, to develop a wage grid based on education and experience would be one such condition that ensures sustainability of the child care system through better staff retention and recruitment. A federally endorsed set of recommendations could also be used to justify limiting for-profit operator expansion, which would reduce the need for large corporate child care centers, typically attached to private equity investments, and are also associated with lower quality due to high staff turnover. (Haspel-Child, 22 April 2024)
Recommendation: Benchmark Against Child Care Participation Rates
Although the federal government tracks child care participation rates, provincial and territorial progress towards expanding CWELCC are not benchmarked against participation rates. Instead, the federal government has set targets based on the number of new child care spaces created. The national goal is to create 250,000 new child care spaces across the country by March 2026. (Office of the Prime Minister of Canada, 28 March 2024) However, the existence of child care space does not mean it is accessible to families in need – provinces are not directing resources to where the vast majority of child care spaces should be built, but instead let the market lead, relying on for-profit and not-for-profit operators to build spaces where they see fit. Operators, especially for-profit operators, are less likely to establish themselves in lower-income communities where new immigrants and racialized people are more likely to live. This is because such households are less likely to be able to pay higher child care fees. (Prentice & White, 2019).
The federal government should consider real benchmarking for child care in priority areas, and the EC’s European Child Care Strategy could be emulated to set targets for higher child care participation rates. A recommendation under this Strategy, known as the revised “Barcelona targets” on early childhood education and care, requires that member states aim to ensure that at least 50 percent of children below the age of three years, and 96 percent of children between the age of three years and the start of compulsory primary education be enrolled in early childhood education and care by 2030. (The European Commission, n.d.b)
The EC’s targets for older children are ambitious, approaching a 100 percent participation rate. In designing participation rates for older children, Canada could create benchmarks against real household demand and goals connected to supporting women’s labour force participation. Targets for younger children are lower knowing that very young children are more likely to be cared for by their parents on paid parental or maternity leave. As a result, these children will not have as high a need for licensed child care and a lower benchmark is more appropriate to meet real household demand.
Currently, Statistics Canada groups children zero to five years together in its statistical analyses of child care participation rates under CWELCC. This prevents a more accurate measurement of child care participation rates between the youngest and older children. (Statistics Canada, 2023) A more detailed accounting of early childhood participation rates is needed to appropriately evaluate these goals. The federal government should also establish participation rate targets for marginalized children as a group, in comparison to all children, as is required by the EC under the ECG. Only then can the Canadian federal government more effectively concretize the high-level inclusion goals currently outlined in the Multilateral Early Learning and Child Care Framework. This is important to hold provinces and territories accountable for failing to meet inclusion goals. Concretizing inclusion goals may further incentivize governments to intervene more directly to support marginalized households’ access to child care. This could include empowering municipalities to plan for and establish public child care centers where they are needed most, rather than continuing to rely on not-for-profit and for-profit operators to build new child care spaces.
Recommendation: Support a Coordinated Approach to Guarantee Basic Rights for Marginalized Children
Between 2020 and 2022, Canada witnessed the largest increase in child poverty rates on record where 360,000 additional children fell into poverty for a new high of 1.4 million children living in poverty. (Campaign 2000, 19 November 2024) Poverty and its social consequences undermine the benefits of high-quality child care, considering the challenges that impoverished families face if, for instance, they are housing insecure and therefore unable to access child care. The full value of child care is also undermined if children do not have adequate access to healthy nutrition and healthcare.
Again, to design such a child care strategy that guarantees basic rights for marginalized children, the federal government should further consider the ECG. The ECG combat social exclusion by requiring EU member states to develop a coordinated approach to guaranteeing marginalized children’s access to five basic rights: free early childhood education; free education; free healthcare; healthy nutrition; and adequate housing (The European Commission, n.d.a)
To support policy coordination, the federal government should consider providing earmarked funding to the provinces and territories tied to coordination efforts across provincial ministries that have responsibility for child care, education, housing, and healthcare. Furthermore, Coordination goals should prioritize collaboration with the divisions, organizations, and government bodies that are responsible for service provision in Indigenous communities and for Indigenous peoples.
Policy coordination is not an easy task for any government as ministries and departments exist as islands of specialization, unsure of or even unwilling to coordinate with other ministries. Unless incentivized otherwise, individual ministries will continue to focus on internal benchmarks and budgets, rather than collective goals. Such barriers can make integration seem like an unrealistic objective. (Peters, 2018)
Internationally, Canada may also consider partnering with an organization like UNICEF to carry out an assessment of provincial policy coordination efforts, as the ECG implemented to bring member states on side. UNICEF’s final report for the EC explored the factors that facilitate and bar policy coordination efforts across member states, providing a set of recommendations for improvement. Key recommendations included creating shared space or joint decision-bodies to coordinate policy measures across ministries. (Molinuevo, Nur & Pozneanscaia, 2021) Like the EC, the federal government should also consider adopting a common monitoring framework to track marginalized children’s access to basic rights and evaluate coordination progress. A common monitoring system is needed, and it can create further impetus for policy coordination efforts between relevant ministries and would certainly help coordinated policy interventions. For example, disproportionately low levels of access to adequate housing and child care amongst marginalized children could facilitate a coordinated effort between the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing and the Ministry of Children, Community, and Social Services. Such ministries could work together to prioritize building child care centres attached to new social housing developments.
Acknowledging the Limitations of the European Commission’s Child Care Strategy
The EC’s strategy is something to be emulated in Canada, but it is not perfect. Notably, one year after the ECG’s reporting deadline in 2023, seven member states have to date not yet submitted a National Action Plan for the ECG. Of those states that have submitted National Action Plans, some have merely recapitulated existing policies and achievements, and are in “action” in name only. Other member states do not sufficiently address targets set out by the EC. (COFACE Families Europe, 2023)
Beyond non-compliance, we need to carefully consider the objective of prioritizing marginalized children’s access to child care. Child care should be used to nurture cultural diversity and support the preservation of Indigenous languages and culture. If child care is used to forcibly assimilate immigrant and Indigenous children to adopt “Canadian values” then such objectives are entirely inappropriate.
Consider that Denmark had a child care participation rate of 90% for children at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion as of 2022 , significantly outperforming other member states. However this is, in part, because Denmark passed a controversial law in 2018 that required the children of immigrants from areas deemed to be “ghettos” to spend at least 25 hours a week in child care to learn Danish values starting at the age of one. Whereas other Danish citizens can choose to enroll their children in preschool, immigrants living in these neighbourhoods will lose their welfare benefits if they do not comply with this assimilationist policy. (Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, 7 February 2022) Despite this nominally successful child care rate, the exclusion and marginalization still experienced by children participating in the Danish child care system is not captured by these benchmark figures.
Recognizing some of these limitations, researchers and policymakers with the Foundation for European Progressive Studies provided the following recommendations to improve outcomes under the ECG:
- Establish a European Child Care Knowledge Hub to build the capacities of local authorities for planning equitable and quality services by mobilizing best experiences across the European Union,
- Establish a separate European Union initiative to promote the quality and retention of the child care workforce,
- Increase the availability of granular data at the territorial level to better plan appropriate actions and targets and to monitor results, and
- Establish a Child Union that recognizes and invests in child care as a right for all children by making child care a legal entitlement. (León et al., January 2023)
For Canadians, these measures should be considered when designing a rights-based national child care strategy to ensure inclusivity as well as equality. A truly universal system must be legislated as a legal entitlement and delivered with the support of high-quality data and best practices based on interjurisdictional knowledge sharing. Importantly, child care expansion will not be possible without a concerted strategy to retain and recruit qualified early childhood educators who are currently leaving the early learning sector at a high rate because of poor compensation.
Conclusion
Although economic uncertainty through the present crisis makes it challenging to envision a more ambitious national child care system, we should not be deterred in this goal to decommodify care. Child care, and the wider care economy, are ultimately an inflation fighting tool, bringing back affordability families amid economic shocks and profiteering. To counter this, we need to demand child care be provided as a human right. The ECG and the European Care Strategy provide important lessons for Canada. By endorsing policy and funding best practices, benchmarking against child care participation rates, and supporting a coordinated approach to guarantee basic rights for marginalized children, the federal government can establish a national framework that will better support establishing child care as a right for all children.
References
Click to expand for a full list of references.
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