The Cheap Daycare Industry has been shaped by union leaders and industry professionals who can’t stand private operators in the child care business, and have made sure that the regulatory environment would squeeze private operators, especially home based caregivers out of the action. These same proponents are rubbing their hands in glee over all the union jobs and administrative jobs for women that will come with the territory. Administration officials in Ottawa, Provincial and Municipal levels all tripping over each other for a slice of the action.
Nobody in their right mind would set up a cheap daycare regime and then undermine critical spaces out of spite for people who supposedly want to “profit” from caring for children. Good grief, everyone is profiting from this mess and every single childcare space is needed. Especially in rural areas where home based care is close to those who need it and can often provide flexibility in hours to accommodate those working long hours.
There are better ways to run a $10/day childcare than what the Trudeau Liberals have concocted. My vote would be for a quarterly transfer of funds from Ottawa to daycare providers who file daily enrolment numbers.
It's hardly surprising that recruiting "early childhood educators" would be a problem, given how miserably they're paid and how low-prestige their work is. Many people regard such 'educators' as little more than glorified babysitters; yet their job responsibilities are challenging, labour intensive and vitally important.
Meanwhile and just back from the dentist, who told me that she is not signing up to the Federal Dental Plan because of lack of transparency involving fees etc. Another great Trudeau initiative. He is just not ready, STILL!
I’ve never understood how the government has difficulty understanding that some people want to raise their children all the time and choose to be a stay at home parent or work opposite shifts so one parent can always be home. The tragedy is that current economic situations make the choice to have a parent stay home out of reach for many families who don’t truly want to be dual income households but have no choice.
The daycare initiative was always likely to fail because it was going to be incredibly expensive. However, it's also suffered from common issues with government programs such as excessive regulation and letting secondary objectives overwhelm the primary purpose.
Child care was already a highly regulated space, with strict ratios for children:caregivers. The younger the children, the tighter the ratios. For example, in BC a single caregiver could supervise 4 kids under the age of 4. Only 2 of those could be under the age of 2, or else you could have 2 under age of 4 and 1 infant under 12 months. That makes caring for young children much more expensive, and creates a crunch because that coincides right with the time when maternity leave benefits run out and mothers return to the workplace.
What the affordable child care benefit did was cap the price that facilities could charge for those expensive spaces, plus increase the cost of the staff they needed to hire by emphasizing early childhood educator certification and emphasizing union-friendly provisions. This was compounded by higher staff absences in the post-COVID period: staff who picked up COVID or one of the many other bugs running around would miss work, and care providers needed extra people available to cover and meet the regulatory ratios.
I understand the thinking behind the fee caps: they didn't want child care businesses to soak up any benefit of government funding by simply charging higher fees. What they didn't seem to understand was that the child care business was already operating at low margins with notoriously low wages. Governments also managed to implement their cost caps in such a way that it actually disincentivized existing providers. The program either needed to be much, much more expensive (and funded with higher taxes), or else they should've said "Nope - can't afford it."
Government subsidized baby sitting plain and simple. Not sure why anybody wants the government to raise their children and as part of that indoctrinate them while doing so.
Why is it that every time an issue comes up, the government never seems to have a functional answer? And it has been that way for decades. Just once, I would love to see them plan ahead rather than react late, trying to put out fires that their own indecision created. I'm not optimistic I'll live to see that.
Childcare is subject to Baumol’s cost disease in extremis - it’s incredible labor intensive in a way that can’t be automated away (try telling parents that their kids will be watched by AI/robots). It’s actually a place where TFWs can be really useful.
As an employer, I love the fact that the Liberal party is obsessed with getting marginally skilled parents out into the workforce. More supply, lower wages.
Let's not kid ourselves, parents, and I mean mostly women, who have highly paid careers already engage with licensed daycare and nannies. They didn't need the subsidy. This is to get those folks where it didn't make sense to work just to pay daycare fees with most of that pay out into the workforce. For that, I am grateful. Every little bit counts to keep wages down in Canada.
C'mon, Rahim: really, "the Canada Home and Mortgage Corporation"? When you cannot get the name of this important government agency, which has been around since 1946, it detracts from your overall commentary.
The Cheap Daycare Industry has been shaped by union leaders and industry professionals who can’t stand private operators in the child care business, and have made sure that the regulatory environment would squeeze private operators, especially home based caregivers out of the action. These same proponents are rubbing their hands in glee over all the union jobs and administrative jobs for women that will come with the territory. Administration officials in Ottawa, Provincial and Municipal levels all tripping over each other for a slice of the action.
Nobody in their right mind would set up a cheap daycare regime and then undermine critical spaces out of spite for people who supposedly want to “profit” from caring for children. Good grief, everyone is profiting from this mess and every single childcare space is needed. Especially in rural areas where home based care is close to those who need it and can often provide flexibility in hours to accommodate those working long hours.
There are better ways to run a $10/day childcare than what the Trudeau Liberals have concocted. My vote would be for a quarterly transfer of funds from Ottawa to daycare providers who file daily enrolment numbers.
It's hardly surprising that recruiting "early childhood educators" would be a problem, given how miserably they're paid and how low-prestige their work is. Many people regard such 'educators' as little more than glorified babysitters; yet their job responsibilities are challenging, labour intensive and vitally important.
Meanwhile and just back from the dentist, who told me that she is not signing up to the Federal Dental Plan because of lack of transparency involving fees etc. Another great Trudeau initiative. He is just not ready, STILL!
I’ve never understood how the government has difficulty understanding that some people want to raise their children all the time and choose to be a stay at home parent or work opposite shifts so one parent can always be home. The tragedy is that current economic situations make the choice to have a parent stay home out of reach for many families who don’t truly want to be dual income households but have no choice.
The daycare initiative was always likely to fail because it was going to be incredibly expensive. However, it's also suffered from common issues with government programs such as excessive regulation and letting secondary objectives overwhelm the primary purpose.
Child care was already a highly regulated space, with strict ratios for children:caregivers. The younger the children, the tighter the ratios. For example, in BC a single caregiver could supervise 4 kids under the age of 4. Only 2 of those could be under the age of 2, or else you could have 2 under age of 4 and 1 infant under 12 months. That makes caring for young children much more expensive, and creates a crunch because that coincides right with the time when maternity leave benefits run out and mothers return to the workplace.
What the affordable child care benefit did was cap the price that facilities could charge for those expensive spaces, plus increase the cost of the staff they needed to hire by emphasizing early childhood educator certification and emphasizing union-friendly provisions. This was compounded by higher staff absences in the post-COVID period: staff who picked up COVID or one of the many other bugs running around would miss work, and care providers needed extra people available to cover and meet the regulatory ratios.
I understand the thinking behind the fee caps: they didn't want child care businesses to soak up any benefit of government funding by simply charging higher fees. What they didn't seem to understand was that the child care business was already operating at low margins with notoriously low wages. Governments also managed to implement their cost caps in such a way that it actually disincentivized existing providers. The program either needed to be much, much more expensive (and funded with higher taxes), or else they should've said "Nope - can't afford it."
Government subsidized baby sitting plain and simple. Not sure why anybody wants the government to raise their children and as part of that indoctrinate them while doing so.
Why is it that every time an issue comes up, the government never seems to have a functional answer? And it has been that way for decades. Just once, I would love to see them plan ahead rather than react late, trying to put out fires that their own indecision created. I'm not optimistic I'll live to see that.
This country desperately needs a large dose of free market.
Childcare is subject to Baumol’s cost disease in extremis - it’s incredible labor intensive in a way that can’t be automated away (try telling parents that their kids will be watched by AI/robots). It’s actually a place where TFWs can be really useful.
As an employer, I love the fact that the Liberal party is obsessed with getting marginally skilled parents out into the workforce. More supply, lower wages.
Let's not kid ourselves, parents, and I mean mostly women, who have highly paid careers already engage with licensed daycare and nannies. They didn't need the subsidy. This is to get those folks where it didn't make sense to work just to pay daycare fees with most of that pay out into the workforce. For that, I am grateful. Every little bit counts to keep wages down in Canada.
C'mon, Rahim: really, "the Canada Home and Mortgage Corporation"? When you cannot get the name of this important government agency, which has been around since 1946, it detracts from your overall commentary.