A new report says giving parents money for child care would help reduce inequality in Quebec’s child-care system.
The report, from the think tank Cardus, says Quebec’s publicly funded child-care system has consistently failed to ensure all families can access low-cost child care.
“It is neither universal nor equitable,” says the report, released in August.
“The low up-front cost of public child care has driven up demand to such an extent that it has never been met.”
About 30,000 children in Quebec are on waitlists for subsidized child care, the report says. Wealthier families are also more likely to use the program, it notes.
‘Replicated’ problems
Quebec’s publicly funded child-care system, which began in 1997, was an inspiration for the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care program that launched in 2021.
While the national program, with its promise of $10-a-day child care, has cut fees for many families, it has also been sharply criticized.
The auditor general reported last year that Ottawa had created fewer than half of the 250,000 new spots promised in the program’s first five years.
Some child-care operators have warned the program locks them into funding agreements that make growth difficult. They have also raised concerns about low-income families being on waitlists, while children from wealthier families have subsidized spots.
“Many of the problems inherent in the Quebec model have been replicated at the federal level, since the [national] program is based on it,” the Cardus report says.
“To build a more equitable system, where no family is left behind due to their care preferences, exclusively funding child-care providers is not a viable strategy.”
The paper proposes that Quebec adopt a model used in Finland, where the government subsidizes child-care spaces but also provides child-care allowances directly to some parents.
One allowance is for parents who are caring full time for young children at home. This allowance begins after parental leave ends and start at €380 (about $612) a month per child.
There are also allowances for parents who reduce their work hours to care for their children at home. Their children may attend public child care when their parents are at work. These allowances range between €108.15 and €269.24 (about $174 to $433) a month.
This “leaves more space [for] parent choice,” said Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard, author of the Cardus report.
Child-care spaces are important and necessary for many families, he said. But some families cannot access them or choose other child-care methods.
“Different families have different preferences for how they take care of their children,” he said.
“The government shouldn’t be nudging parents in one way, especially if it can’t even give all of these parents the service that it [says it will] be able to give.”
According to polling from Cardus, parents in Quebec are split on this topic. Half favour the current system of subsidized child-care, while half favour government allowances to parents.
Quebec’s current child-care funding program favours parents who work, says Beauregard. Only parents who place their children in subsidized child-care spaces receive government support to care for their children, he says.
“If we did really care about families, we [would] have a more balanced policy that allows parents to better manage their schedules,” he said.
Systems ‘crumble’
Not everyone agrees that government allowances are the best way to solve Quebec’s child-care problems.
Sophie Mathieu, an assistant professor at the school of applied policy at Sherbrooke University, agrees that Quebec’s program has flaws. There are too many “child-care deserts” and not enough trained early childhood educators, she says.
But funding parents directly would cause the current program to “crumble.”
“[Funding parents] doesn’t create a structure, a network with regulations and trained child-care workers.”
In her view, the biggest problem with Quebec’s system is that the government funds both non-profit and for-profit centres.
The non-profit centres are better quality, says Mathieu, who is a member of the federal government’s advisory council on child care.
Mathieu agrees it is a problem that mainly high-income families can access subsidized child care. But she says that is the fault of “structural inequalities,” not the public child-care system.
Publicly funded child-care spaces also allow women with low-paying jobs to work, and work empowers them, she says.
It takes a long time to create a publicly funded child-care program, she says.
“People are frustrated because it doesn’t go fast enough,” she said.
“In the long run, it will be better for the families [to] have access to high-quality child care and have access to a network instead of a cheque.”
