In 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau provided $30 billion over five years to cover the cost of a national daycare program. The program was to provide $10 a-day daycare spaces by 2026. This plan can be added to the long list of Trudeau policy failures. It was not well thought out and has become bogged down with problems which should have been anticipated.
One of the major problems with this plan is the severe lack of trained early childhood education workers. It is not a very popular field for many because of the low wages. The workers cannot survive on the wage provided. This has always been a problem with day care operations. It results in a continuous turnover of workers, which causes parents to complain that their children learn from this unfortunate situation to not make strong attachments to other people, believing that relationships are only temporary and not long lasting.
The obvious solution to this problem is to raise the wages of trained daycare workers, but this reduces the funds required for infrastructure maintenance, and equipment and materials. Although [“a”] $10 a-day child care may be beneficial for parents, it’s not good for the provincial governments which are trying to create and maintain this service under the federal provincial agreements.
The latter required the provinces to provide an annual report on their progress. To date, only three provinces, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia have submitted a report. Their reports are not good news.
Saskatchewan had agreed to provide 28,000 new spaces, but to date has created only 2,212 new spaces. This does not bode well for the future. However, at least Saskatchewan recognizes the problem of a lack of trained daycare workers and has used some of its daycare funds to encourage more students to enter child care training, and has also raised the wages of the workers somewhat. This has not been very successful however, in increasing the number of students seeking training in this field.
British Columbia had a target of 30,000 new daycare spaces under the agreement, and managed to create 1,200 new child care spaces in the first year of the program. There’s little chance that it can reach its target of 30,000 spaces by 2026, which would require over 7000 new spaces to be created each year until then.
New Brunswick had a target of 3,400 spaces but has created only 300 new spaces in the past year. These new spaces were mainly created in previously established child care centres.
Although the remaining provinces and territories failed to provide a progress report on their daycare situation, it’s likely that they are struggling with the same problems as BC, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan.
Additionally, although some new daycare spaces have been created, there is no record of the number of for-profit daycare spaces that have had to shut down because they could not compete with the government’s $10 a- day spaces. The federal government strongly emphasizes that the day care spaces not be for profit and must be in not-for-profit centres. But this has not been possible for the provinces to achieve.
It is obvious that providing new daycare spaces is a complex, expensive undertaking, resulting in targets difficult to achieve. The federal government’s great plans to establish a national day care program remains theoretical, only.
It is so much more efficient and desirable for parents to receive increased child care benefits paid directly to them. This will then provide more child care options that accommodates the parents’ own values and perspectives.