Parent Time

Everyone’s heard stories about parents signing up for daycare centre waiting lists the day after finding out they’re expecting. And as long ago as the 1970s, advocates were clamouring for more government investment in licensed child care. But, outside of Quebec, growth in child care spaces has been very gradual. (See Report Card for more on the numbers.) That seemed likely to improve after the former Liberal government, nudged by the NDP, forged a major federal-provincial deal designed to create a big whack of child care spaces and improve quality.

Now we have a right-leaning government which, as a first order of business, scuttled that deal in favour of a baby bonus dressed up as a child care program. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives seem poised to win the next election. Does that mean regulated child care will stay on the margins of the government’s spending priorities? Maybe not. Read on for the four reasons why child care might yet expand.

Originally published in Today's Parent, April 2008