Thank you very much, Chair Gladu. I hear that you have a book out, so thanks for advertising that multiple times.
Cardus is a not-for-profit think tank. Over the course of more than a decade, we've compiled peer-reviewed child care research and produced papers, including a recent collaborative effort called “A Positive Vision for Child Care Policy Across Canada”. We've also done polling of Canadians' child care preferences, among other things.
Today, I would like to comment on child care data and then look at solutions for families, both during and after a pandemic.
Child care is the care of a child, no matter who does it. Child care is not only a women's issue; it's also a family issue. We have, across Canada, a tremendous and beautiful diversity of care options available, care that is both done and chosen by families according to their own cultures, customs, traditions and work needs.
Statistics Canada data tell us that, prior to the pandemic, most parents do, in fact, find what they are looking for. Two-thirds of parents report no difficulty in finding a space or a child care arrangement. Only 3% of parents cite a shortage of spaces as a reason for not using non-parental child care.
Again, nationally, according to Statistics Canada, about 60% of children under six are in non-parental care. We don't know a lot about that 60%, whether they're in for five hours or 55 hours, but of those children, about half are in child care centres or in a preschool program. What this means is that if we consider all children in Canada under the age of six, both those in parental care and those in non-parental care, only 31% are currently in centre-based spaces or preschools.
Polls and surveys consistently show over years that parents do not prefer centre spaces for their children, so the obvious implication of this is that using public money to disproportionately fund spaces means that the vast majority of Canadian children receive no benefit.
Public funding for spaces is structurally opposed to equity for all families. This inequity, I would argue, is particularly bad in a pandemic. At a time when mothers—both those doing waged work and those not—are most needed and continue to need support in the home, money is flowing to spaces sitting empty because we are sheltering in place.
The data further suggest that it's not a lack of access to child care that is preventing mothers from returning to waged work. In Ontario, 93% of day cares were back in operation by the end of September, but in places like Brampton, for example, only 20% of those spaces are occupied. I have the data for Alberta. They reported that 94% of day cares were back in operation, with an enrolment rate of about 50%. This suggests that factors other than the availability of child care spaces are at play when considering how and when mothers return to waged work, particularly in and after a pandemic.
I think the federal government has many options to help families. I will suggest four today.
The first is arguably the most important: to start consulting more widely with truly diverse communities, parents and child development experts.
Gordon Neufeld is a treasure to Canada and a developmental psychologist who is based in Vancouver. He specializes in attachment. The various economists who have done peer-reviewed research on the issue of quality, in Quebec, in particular, Steven Lehrer, Milligan, Baker, Gruber, all of these people need to be involved and consulted.
The research and the voices that I am bringing here today do, in fact, represent a majority of Canadians. Most Canadians want flexibility in how we care for our very youngest so that families can do what works for them.
Second, I would suggest that we can enhance existing federal programs, such as the successful Canada child benefit.
Third, I might consider changes to make maternity and parental leave more flexible.
Finally, bilateral federal-provincial agreements and particularly agreements with our first nations should maximize freedom and flexibility so as to honour the unique heritage, culture, history and tradition of different cultures across Canada.
There is little evidence that expanded space provision will help mothers return to waged work after the pandemic.
There is evidence of an existing ecosystem of parental and non-parental child care in Canada that is neither properly understood nor accounted for, and it risks being steamrolled in a so-called universal system. The federal government should cherish and defend the beautiful choice and diversity, an intricate patchwork quilt of variety, that already exists in child care across Canada today.
