Landmark report calls on the province to make licensed child care more affordable

Day care
A new report authored by a U of T Scarborough economist finds that Ontario should make it a priority to provide free licensed child care for preschool children.

Don Campbell

A new report authored by a U of T Scarborough economist is calling on Queen’s Park to provide free licensed child care in Ontario for children age 2 1/2 to kindergarten.

The report, authored by Associate Professor Emeritus Gordon Cleveland in collaboration with Professor Michael Krashinsky, both from the Department of Management, offers a detailed look at a range of policy and funding options while also recommending key steps to improve child care affordability for families in Ontario.

“By making child care free of charge for all children of preschool age, it will drastically improve affordability for all Ontario families in the one or two years before kindergarten,” he says.

 The report calls for implementing free child care for preschool children age 2 1/2 to kindergarten as an immediate priority. As physical space and staffing capacity at licensed child care centres is increased, greater affordability for infant and toddler care should also be phased in.

“We focus on preschool children because Ontario already has a substantial number of child care spaces for that age group – about 110,000” says Cleveland.  “That means that Ontario can reach the target number of child care spaces much more easily for preschoolers than for infants or toddlers – avoiding shortages and waiting lists.”

Meanwhile, the report calls on the Ministry of Education to provide greater funding for the existing child care subsidy system while also loosening regulations on activity requirements. These requirements, among other things, require parents to be working full-time or pursuing full-time education or training to apply for a subsidy.

“These regulations ignore the reality of today’s economy where many parents are working on a temporary basis, on contracts or a series of part-time jobs,” says Cleveland.  

Once additional child care capacity is made available and qualified staff shortages have been reduced, the report recommends that child care subsidies be replaced with a sliding scale payment system. Under the system, household income would determine the fee a family would have to pay. So a family earning less than $50,000 would pay nothing, while those earning more than $150,000 would pay 80 per cent of the full fee.

“Child care affordability is a huge issue,” says Cleveland. “The goal of this report was to analyze the current situation, run through the options, and offer recommendations on how to take the first big steps.”

The 315-page report titled Affordable For All: Making Licensed Child Care Affordable in Ontario, was commissioned by the province and started back in July 2017.

Gordon Cleveland
Gordon Cleveland is an Associate Professor Emeritus in U of T Scarborough's Department of Management and an expert on the economics of child care. (Photo by Ken Jones)

Cleveland notes that an average family in the province with children under the age of four would have to spend close to 24 per cent of its after-tax household income to access licensed child care. Put another way, child care would eat up 67 per cent of the net income of the main caregiving parent, which is most often the mother.

“The unaffordability of child care is a huge barrier for women,” says Cleveland, an expert on the economics of child care who also co-authored a study on child care affordability in Toronto.

“It’s forcing too many mothers to make a decision to stay at home rather than enter, or re-enter, the workforce.”

In addition to employment outcomes for women, affordable licensed child care is also good policy for early childhood development, especially for ages three to four, he adds.

On Tuesday, Premier Kathleen Wynne seemed to endorse the key findings of the report, pledging a $2.2 billion boost to child care funding ahead of Wednesday’s budget.

While Cleveland says it’s gratifying to see the recommendations of the report endorsed, more broadly he hopes it will encourage parents to support child care affordability measures in the province. 

“I hope this report really resonates with parents because if they want this to happen, they’re going to have to make their voices heard regardless of which government is elected,” he says.