10-year anniversary of the Child Care Reforms in Quebec
A group of sessions at the 2007 ACFAS Conference in Trois-Rivieres (organized by Prof. Nathalie Bigras, UQAM) was organized to assess and evaluate different aspects of this major set of policy reforms. With some translation help, I gave a prerecorded speech in French at this conference. Have a look at the slides for this speech, or at the text of the speech itself (in French, or in English), about the Benefits and Costs of the new system of Centres de la Petite Enfances.
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Ontario has now (fall 2009) announced that full (school) day early learning services will be available in all Ontario schools by 2015. And the first 35,000 spaces for full-day early learning will be available in September 2010. Recently, I participated in a panel discussion on TVO's The Agenda about the design and roll-out of this exciting new policy. Click on the link above, and then look for the episode - on November 5th, 2009 - labelled "Kathleen Wynne - Early Childhood Politics" to see streaming video of the discussion.
Check out the home site of the Childcare Resource and Research Unit in Toronto www.childcarecanada.org
Welcome! Here you will find economic research papers on Early Childhood Education and Care (also called child care, or Early Learning and Child Care). I am an economist at the University of Toronto at Scarborough, and what you will find here is the research that interests me.
1. REPORT on Nonprofit and For-Profit Child Care Centres in Canada
This is the final report of a 3-year project studying nonprofit and for-profit child care centres in Canada, by Gordon Cleveland, Barry Forer, Douglas Hyatt, Christa Japel and Michael Krashinsky. The focus has been to establish whether and under what conditions nonprofit operation of centres will lead to higher quality services. The authors use four different data sets to answer the question. Here is a very brief summary. And here are a few chosen excerpts from the Final Report. However, Chapter Two of the report provides a more fulsome summary. The report analyzes data from You Bet I Care! (six provinces and one territory), Grandir en Qualite (Quebec), the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development (or ELDEQ; Quebec), and data from the City of Toronto. It includes a reasonably comprehensive survey of relevant literature and information about nonprofit and for-profit child care in other countries.
Click here to get an electronic copy of the Final Report.
2. CANADA-WIDE POLL BY CPAC: Widespread support for universal, taxpayer-funded, pre-school child care system
A recent poll found only 14% of Canadians strongly opposed to universal, publicly-funded child care and another 10% somewhat opposed. 62% of Canadians were either somewhat or strongly in favour of funding a child care system for pre-school children.
Child Care for a Change! Shaping the 21st Century: WINNIPEG CONFERENCE MATERIALS
3. Slides for a Presentation to the "Winnipeg" Conference (in the form of a letter to Minister Ken Dryden)
Financing Canada's Child Care System: A Letter to Ken
4. Conference Paper: Financing Early Learning and Child Care in Canada
Download a copy of the paper by Gordon Cleveland and Michael Krashinsky
"Apart from Quebec’s recently-developed system and kindergartens
in the schools, early childhood care in Canada is a market service,
supplemented by the subsidization of low-income families. Because of
the public benefits from providing appropriate developmental care for
our young children and positive supports to employment for young families,
early learning and child care should be a publicly-financed service.
This financing must be provided in a way that supports services, is
carefully monitored and publicly accountable, distributes benefits equitably,
and spends scarce public resources efficiently..."
5. SPEECH to the Institute for Research on Public Policy Roundtable - "Assessing Family Policy in Canada"
Download the IRPP speech in PDF format.
Download (from the IRPP web site) the audio web cast or the roundtable program.