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The Triumph of Ideology Over Policy Analysis

Parisa Mahboubi and Tingting Zhang wrote a pretty good policy analysis paper for the CD Howe Institute back in March 2026 entitled “From Promise to Practice: A Critical Review of the Federal Childcare Plan”.   I didn’t agree with all of it, but much of it was a reasonably balanced assessment of some problems with the universal child care system ushered in by the Liberal government in 2021 (known as the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program, or CWELCC).  Mahboubi and Zhang acknowledged the huge impact that the Quebec universal program had had on the labour supply of mothers 25 …

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Prominent Canadians Support Investment in Quality Child Care

Have a look at the website https://givekidsastrongstart.com/.  22 prominent Canadians have put their names to an open letter telling governments and citizens that more child care is good for business and the economy and good for children and their families. In other words, more child care is good for Canada.  The open letter calls on leaders from all sectors to join them in supporting early childhood education as a nation-building investment in Canada’s future.  And see these explanatory comments from prominent Canadians. The 22 signatories are a cross-section of senior Canadian corporate, financial, health, research and civic leadership, with multiple …

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Globe and Mail Fantasies

Did you see the Globe and Mail editorial last Sunday (June 28)?   The Globe has plans to fix everything that’s wrong with the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program.  A good objective, but I do wish the Globe would do some serious research before trotting out the same tired old solutions that have never worked for child care.  Their plan would return us to market-driven child care solutions with no controls on rising fees, no financial accountability for the expenditure of public dollars, and no preference for non-profit child care.  There would be financial assistance for low-income families but …

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ACE National’s New Proposal to Reduce Affordability, Access and Accountability in Ontario Child Care

ACE National is an organization that groups together child care operators, most of them for-profits, to lobby for reforms that serve their interests.  Their chair and most prominent spokesperson is Krystal Churcher, who owns a child care centre in Fort McMurray, Alberta, and also heads up the Churcher Group which is a consultancy firm supporting child care operators. ACE National recently published a report recommending 10 major reforms to CWELCC in Ontario. These reforms would apparently create “A Structurally Sustainable Framework for CWELCC” for the years 2027–2031. Unfortunately, their report is actually a slide deck – with 10 very briefly …

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My Submission to the Standing Committee on Finance, 2026

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance has been taking pre-budget submissions from whoever wants to contribute. I chose, unsurprisingly, to focus on funding child care, especially child care in Ontario. Here’s what I wrote: RECOMMENDATIONS TOPICS The benefits of universal child care Much has been written about the benefits of universal child care.  Two recent papers are especially important.   The first is by economists Michael Baker, Johnathan Gruber and Kevin Milligan.[1] They analyze universal child care in Quebec to show that: The second paper, again analyzing universal child care in Quebec, is by economists Montpetit, Carrer and …

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Child Care Investments Really Do Pay Off

Economists Michael Baker, Johnathan Gruber and Kevin Milligan have just produced a remarkably important research study.  We all know about the studies (here, here and here) that show that Quebec’s $5 a day child care had really significant positive impacts on women’s labour force participation.   The employment rate of Quebec women went from substantially below the rest of Canada to substantially above.  The fixed, predictable parent fee removed a major barrier to mothers’ employment. And Pierre Fortin and his colleagues (here) have given us good reason to believe that these increases in women’s employment generated by predictable parent fees brought …

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A Plea to Mark Carney and Provincial/Territorial Governments

Relying on the private sector can make sense in competitive markets.  The selfish pursuit of profit is counterbalanced by the force of competition, so that results may be socially positive. But some pursuits don’t work well when dominated by private interests; early learning and child care is one of them.  The counterbalance of competition isn’t there and guardrails need to be established to ensure socially positive results.  Child care in Canada already has substantial amounts of for-profit child care – more than half of the providers in a majority of provinces are commercial operators.  The Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child …

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EVALUATING ONTARIO’S IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CANADA-WIDE EARLY LEARNING AND CHILD CARE PROGRAM

On December 3rd, I sponsored a small webinar providing an assessment of how Ontario -the province I live in – is doing in the implementation of the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program (CWELCC). It’s a bit of a misnomer to call it “Canada-Wide” because every province and territory is implementing this program differently.  Some are making good progress, others not.  So, I wanted to figure out for myself how I would judge Ontario’s efforts so far.   I sent out two slide decks to participants.  The first reviews the basic regulations and the structure and responsibilities of institutions responsible …

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PARENT-ONLY CARE AND CHILD CARE ATTENDANCE BY CHILD’S AGE

56% of children 0-5 years of age across Canada use some form of non-parental child care on a regular basis. This is the finding of a large parent survey – Statistics Canada’s 2023 Canadian Survey on Early Learning and Child Care. However, nearly 980,000  or 44% – are cared for exclusively by their parents. This seems surprising to many, and apparently contrary to the notion that families need child care when their children are young.  However, when the data are looked at more closely, some of the reasons become clear.  In the first year, or sometimes the first eighteen months …

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HOW MANY CHILDREN ARE USING LICENSED CHILD CARE?

According to recent data, 938,200 children are regularly attending licensed or regulated child care services across Canada (not including the Territories).  That is about 42% of Canada’s children 0-5 years of age who used licensed child care as their main care arrangement in 2023.  A much smaller proportion of these young children (6.8% and 7.4%) respectively) are using unlicensed child care provided by a non-relative or care by a relative as their main arrangement. The data comes from Statistics Canada ‘s Canadian Survey of Early Learning and Child Care, which collected data about child care arrangements from nearly 30,000 parents …

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