This is for the period between 1996 and 2008, the first 12 years of low-cost child care. Almost 70,000 additional mothers joined the workforce; it was, I think, 69,700. Employment rates for mothers with children under the age of six increased 22%. The number of single mothers on social assistance dropped from 99,000 to 45,000, so by more than half. The after-tax median income of single mothers rose by 81%. The relative poverty rates for single-parent families headed by women declined more than a third—the figure is actually 36%—to less than a quarter. It was down to 22%.
From YWCA Canada's point of view, with child care I believe we are at the point that the country was with public schools in the late 1800s, when that was a system that was coming in and that was going to be accessible to everyone. You see it across the country: provinces struggling to make a response, increases in full-day kindergarten.
We'll never have an equal system unless the federal government shows some leadership. We're not talking about the federal government providing child care; clearly that has to come through provinces and locally. But as with other things for which there is shared responsibility, the government can work on agreements and they can support this. We just think the money is much better spent in that direction, because the fact is you have between 66% and 80% of women in the workforce.