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Some Thoughts About Australian Child Care Policy

The Labor federal (i.e., Commonwealth) government of Australia has declared its intention to move towards universal child care. There is a lot of interest in the Quebec model. The Commonwealth government asked the Productivity Commission to investigate and to provide a roadmap towards universal early childhood education and care throughout Australia. The post below is my submission in response to the draft report of the Productivity Commission which you can find here. As you can see, my advice and comments are strongly informed by Canada and Quebec’s experiences. Response to the Productivity Commission Draft Report Main Messages There are some …

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The story coming from the CSELCC survey – I don’t think we’re going to make it…not even close!

We know that child care affordability is improving dramatically because of the $10-a-day program (otherwise known as CWELCC or the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Program).  But what about access and availability?  It’s difficult to know.  There is some activity, and lots of announcements, but are there actually more children using licensed child care?  A really important question, because most of the social and economic benefits of the $10-a-day program come from improving access to children and families that haven’t used child care before. Finally we have some solid answers.  Statistics Canada just completed a massive survey of parents …

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Turnover and Labour Supply in the Early Care and Education Sector

If we raise wages in the licensed child care sector in Canada, will it make much difference?  How much difference would it make?  There’s not much research around that can help us answer these questions.  And yet, they are really important to policy makers, to advocates and to parents who are trying to find scarce child care spots. Now, some really capable economists in the U.S. have published a paper (Cunha and Lee, 2023) in the National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper series that can help us.  There’s a lot in this paper, but our focus is more narrow.  …

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What  the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Can Tell Us About For-Profit Child Care

What would Canada’s child care system look like if we let it be dominated by for-profit child care providers?  Particularly with Pierre Poilievre lurking in the wings, it’s an interesting question to ask. So, into my inbox arrives a fascinating study from what they call the “A triple-C” (ACCC) or Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.  When the new Labor Prime Minister of Australia – Anthony Albanese – arrived in office in 2022, he commissioned two big studies of child care.  He asked the ACCC to examine how well or badly the market for child care was working.  And he asked …

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HOW MUCH WILL IT COST TO RAISE THE WAGES OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATORS?

It is now widely acknowledged that the pay of early childhood educators is too low.  Comparisons of ECE hourly wages to those in other competing occupations show that educators are paid as if they had a high school education rather than a college certificate or diploma.  We can see the effects of this in the extreme shortages of fully-qualified ECEs for existing and new child care facilities.  In most Canadian provinces and territories, growth in spaces is held back as much by the lack of staff as it is by the lack of organizational and financial support for planned and …

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British Columbia’s New Spaces Funding Program

My opinion of British Columbia’s New Spaces Fund is shaped by the context.   It’s a valuable, if imperfect, source of capital funding for the expansion of not-for-profit and public child care. The context is that we’re not doing a good job in expanding the availability of child care services in Canada.  That’s disappointing, of course, but also a danger to the ultimate success of the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program.  Without rapidly expanded capacity, most parents will not be able to benefit from $10 a day child care.  Women will not be able to enter the labour force.  …

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Modular Child Care Expansion in Manitoba: An Idea Worth Looking At

This is a good-news story about the expansion of child care capacity.  Right now, there are not many good-news stories; child care expansion is happening much slower than it should be.  And all the indications are that even the 250,000 additional child care spaces that provinces and territories have planned (but not funded!) by 2026 will not be enough.  TD Economics, in its recent publication, calculates that at least 243,000 MORE spaces will be needed to satisfy demand for child care when it is available at $10 a day.  So, we had better get working on designing, funding and building …

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Ontario’s 2024 Funding Formula

Ontario’s new funding formula should be providing clarity about guaranteed operating funding going forward.  It should provide for significantly increased staff compensation to deal with the obvious crisis in retention and recruitment.  It should give guarantees of sufficient future funding to make possible the rapid growth in not-for-profit and public facilities.  It should provide spending discretion to operators to spend funds in ways that are most appropriate to their program and community.  It should make clear that there will be ongoing and detailed financial accountability at the end of the funding year.  Further, the funding formula should be designed to …

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An Open Letter to Kevin Rudd…from a Canadian economist who cares about Australian child care

This is a letter I wrote in 2008 (yes, 15 years ago) to the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd. He had recently promised to expand demand-side funding in Australia by extending the Child Care Tax Rebate to cover 50% of parents’ child care spending, up from 30%. I argue in this letter that this will do little in the long run to improve child care affordability, but that it will put a lot of money into the pockets of for-profit child care operators. Unfortunately, I think I have been proven right. I propose that Australia should treat child care …

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 Why the Preference for Not-for-Profit and Public Child Care Services? 

This is my submission to the Parliamentary Committee studying Bill C-35 in Canada. I am an economist who specializes in the analysis of child care systems and in the design of child care policies and their effects. I have taught economics at the University of Toronto for 24 years.  I have published numerous articles analyzing issues related to child care in academic and policy journals.  I was the economist for the Special Parliamentary Committee on Child Care established by the Mulroney government in 1986-87.  I was the main author of a major report on child care reform in Ontario for …

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