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Stop dilly-dallying on child care, Ford

Supriya Dwivedi freelance contributing columnist for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @supriyadwivedi

Mere days after the federal election, Ontario Premier Doug Ford stated plainly that he wanted to sign a childcare deal with the feds.

It’s been over a month since Ford’s proclamation, and Ontario still does not have a child-care agreement. While the federal government was able to get child-care deals done with governments of varying partisan stripes in Quebec, Manitoba, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and the Yukon, the Ford government remains a notable holdout.

The only other province either unable or unwilling to ink a deal on child care has been Jason Kenney’s government in Alberta.

Child-care costs in Ontario, especially in the GTA, are on average significantly higher than in the rest of the country. Families need a plan that will actually bring down costs, while also increasing access. When the Ford government was elected, it decided to opt for tax credits instead of the plan proposed by the Liberals under Kathleen Wynne that would have provided free licensed child care for preschool-aged children. Preferring a system of tax credits over subsidizing licensed child care is pretty conventional capital-C Conservative thinking in this country, as evidenced most recently by the federal Tories in the last election, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise that the Progressive Conservatives in Ontario would have gone that route.

What is surprising, however, is that a government that claims to be preoccupied with the labour shortage in this province — and wants desperately to get people back to work — wouldn’t be jumping at the opportunity to do a sure thing we know will significantly boost female participation in the workforce.

There is good reason as to why major business organizations are joining the chorus of voices that have long advocated for better and more affordable child care in this country. Ensuring that women have affordable child care is key to our economic recovery, so that the women who were forced to leave the workforce during the pandemic to care for their children can return once again.

The federal plan, much like the Quebec model it is based on, is not perfect. Critics are right to point out that the subsidized daycare model works best for parents who have a traditional 9-to-5 working schedule, and parents who do shift work would not directly benefit from the federal plan. But that alone isn’t an argument not to sign onto the federal agreement, especially when we know the status quo isn’t working.

There is robust, empirical data to support the fact that simply cutting a cheque or providing a tax credit does not increase access to child care. There’s also quite a bit of evidence to suggest that in increasing demand by lowering costs, it makes child-care spaces — already hard to come by — all the scarcer.

We also have to do something on the supply side of the equation to increase the total number of available spaces. Governments can dole out all the tax credits they want, but if the actual child-care spots for kids do not exist, parents cannot task a tax credit with watching their kids.

Ontarians will head to the polls by June 2, 2022. If the Progressive Conservatives want to venture into an election without a child-care deal in place with the federal government — during a time economists have dubbed a “she-cession,” where it’s been welldocumented that working women are bearing the brunt of all of the extra child-care duties brought on by the pandemic — then the PCs should probably just go ahead and register for inkind donations to the opposition parties. The attack ads practically write themselves.

The Progressive Conservatives have put out pre-election ads in which they tout themselves as the only party “saying yes,” and the only party that is “looking to the future” and is “ready to build.” Building infrastructure isn’t solely relegated to construction workers labouring on roads and bridges. Child care is indeed critical infrastructure.

So what’s Ford waiting for? Say yes, premier.

Supriya Dwivedi is a GTA-based Liberal political commentator who works as senior counsel for Enterprise Canada. She is a

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2021-10-24T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-24T07:00:00.0000000Z

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