With the cost of child care mounting and no relief in sight, Laura Mae Lindo stepped down from her role as MPP for Kitchener Centre in the Ontario Legislature earlier this month.
The NDP member spent days at a time at Queen’s Park in Toronto, a 90-minute drive from Kitchener. That left the single mother relying on a network of child-care providers and paying extra for overnight care.
“I was leaving on Sunday to start work on Monday and didn’t return until Thursday night or Friday morning. Somebody had to basically be me when I was gone,” Lindo told Canadian Affairs in an interview.
Lindo fears the reality of Canada’s current child-care situation pushes mothers who work irregular hours or shifts out of the economy and positions of power.
“If you want women and people that are lower income and single parents to be at the decision-making table, you’ve got to take away barriers so that they can be there,” said Lindo.
‘Of all the things’
When Lindo was first elected to the provincial government in 2018, her three kids were three, 10 and 13. Child-care coverage was one of the first questions she had for her new employer.
When the caucus first tried to cover the expenses, it was blocked, Lindo said. She was then told it would be covered, but as a taxable benefit.
Even with the MPP base salary of $116,500, Lindo found the situation untenable.
“In 2022, I told the party that I wasn’t going to run again. I couldn’t afford to run.”
One last appeal to the Board of Internal Economy and the Speaker of the House were enough to convince Lindo that the issue would be resolved. “So I took a shot on it and won re-election in June 2022,” Lindo said.
But by September 2022, she was told nothing else could be done about her child-care costs besides having it listed as a taxable benefit, she says. In January, she announced she would be stepping down.
“There was a moment where I realized that child care was literally the thing that was going to push me out of the system. Of all the things in 2023, child care got me… I had to make a pretty challenging decision, not only to resign but whether or not I would be public about why.”
Rigid hours
Since 2021, the federal government has been working with the provinces and territories to achieve a nationwide, affordable child-care system by 2026.
A TD Economics report released June 20 indicates that improved access to affordable child care has “amplified” the labour participation rate of women with children under six.
But the report also indicates that a significant labour gap remains between women with young children and women with adult kids or no kids. One factor may be continuing gaps in the child-care system.
Currently, most government funding is directed to public, non-profit facilities, which often don’t offer flexible hours on evenings or weekends.
“I’m still optimistic but recognize there’s a lot of work to be done,” said Morna Ballantyne, executive director of Child Care Now. “We have to make space for children whose parents or caregivers work irregular hours.”
A report done last year by Cardus, a think tank, found that Canada’s working class has shifted.
“The stereotype of the working class might be a man and blue-collar worker in the goods-producing sector. But the working class today is just as likely to be female, recently immigrated and working in the services sector,” said Renze Nauta, program director of work and economics with Cardus.
The working class is more likely to have shift work or multiple jobs, taking them away from home for longer periods of time, he explained. “For any child-care program to be successful it will have to address affordability and flexibility.”
Gap in care
That flexibility is key for a shift worker such as Semira Kaul, who works as a nurse at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.
The inaccessibility of child care leads many shift workers to depend on their family and friends, explained Kaul, who has two young children.
“And even for my colleagues whose kids are not in daycare, they have to pay for morning and afternoon care because we don’t have a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job. We can’t pick up our kids when school or daycare ends.”
After-hours child care is complex, says Kristi Carlmusson, an early childhood educator in Brantford, Ont.
“I have a friend who used to work overnight shifts and her husband also worked late, so I would go over to their house at 9 p.m. and leave at about midnight to watch their two young kids,” said Carlmusson.
That kind of care isn’t as easy in a daycare facility, where kids are put to bed and then woken up when their parents arrive late, she said.
A 2022 report on Ontario’s early years and child-care program acknowledged a gap in available care for shift workers. Only 10 per cent of child-care centres reported availability on weekends and fewer than one per cent had evening or overnight care.
Quebec, which has publicly subsidized child care since 1997, introduced a pilot project in 2022 to subsidize child care during evenings and weekends, as recently reported by Canadian Affairs. Quebec will release the findings of the project next year.
There have always been waitlists and gaps in the country’s child-care system, said Marni Flaherty, interim CEO of the Canadian Child Care Federation. “It’s going to take time to build a system.”
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