Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
“Emeritus professor” just means that I'm old, so don't worry about the title.
I'm very enchanted and most honoured to have this invitation from you.
I will begin in French, but then switch to English.
My presentation will focus on Quebec's experience in the last 25 years.
At a time when the entire country has embarked on a process of rapid development of child care services, it is important to understand the successes and difficulties Quebec has experienced since 1997, so that everyone's judgment over the coming years will be informed.
Quebec’s Educational Childcare Act of 1996 set two explicit objectives. One was to help families improve their work-life balance. The second was to enhance child development with a strong emphasis on equality of opportunity.
After 25 years, there are two broad outcomes. First, work-life balance has made huge progress. Second, child development and equality of opportunity have been enhanced, but are still very much a work in progress.
Quebec parents initially had access to child care spaces at a low universal daily fee of $5, which has been adjusted upward to, currently, $8.85. Since 2009, a private full-fee, for-profit sector has been allowed to develop competitively with the low-fee, non-profit sector by giving parents access to a generous provincial refundable tax credit on child care expenses.
I would emphasize eight takeaways from this 25-year experiment.
First, child care utilization has expanded in the province to around 300,000 spaces, which is up from 79,000 in 1997. The child care system has remained hugely popular ever since 1997, at over 90%.
Second, system costs have been under control. The total cost in 2022 is some $3.1 billion, which is somewhat less than the current OECD median of 0.6% of GDP.
Third, the labour force participation of Quebec women has risen to the highest level worldwide. It's on par with Sweden. In 2022, 88% of Quebec women aged 25 to 54 were in the labour force, compared to 84% in other provinces and 76% in the United States.
Fourth, women’s economic security and lifetime wages have increased significantly. The male-female hourly wage gap in Quebec has been cut by half in the last 20 years, going down from 17% to 9%. Women can now pursue continuous careers instead of staggered careers that are caught in a string of job separations, promotion delays and wage stagnation after every new birth.
Fifth, our best estimate is that Quebec’s GDP is likely 1.5%—or currently $8 billion—higher than it would be without the child care system.
Sixth, the larger labour force and broad economic activity allow the child care program to more than pay for itself. It has not required any increase in taxes. The fiscal surpluses can be reinvested to expand public services or to reduce taxes. There's a choice.
Seventh, the unanimous findings of the psycho-medical literature are that the quality of child care and its favourable impact on child development are highest in the low-fee, non-profit early childhood centres—the centres de la petite enfance, or CPE,—and lowest in the private full-fee, for-profit centres.
There is no way to escape the conclusion that private markets for child care have, unfortunately, been a quality failure. I'm saying “unfortunately” because I have defended private market solutions throughout my career, but a fact is a fact. It therefore appears very clear to most—including many private for-profit providers—that the way for the province to go about this from now on is to raise quality levels, by all means and everywhere, up to CPE standards.
Last but not least, access for disadvantaged children to good-quality care is lagging and should be a top priority for policy.
In conclusion, the Quebec system has not been following a Robin Hood-type targeted approach but the Scandinavian tradition of universality. The new federal transfers to provinces for child care are also conditioned on generalizing the Scandinavian approach to all of Canada. The Quebec evidence compellingly suggests that this is the way to go.
There are three main lessons to be drawn.
One, the economic well-being of women has been greatly enhanced.
Two, there has been no need to increase taxes.
Three, the obvious challenges now are these. One is getting rid of the remaining shortages of spaces. Two is increasing quality everywhere up to CPE standards. Three is attracting more disadvantaged children into the high-quality sector.
Thank you very much.