Canadian families are doing their share for a prosperous future – they’re having more babies – but governments are letting them down.
Public spending on licensed child care remains grossly inadequate, and so is the supply of space. Meanwhile hard-pressed parents face crushing costs as a “baby boomlet” puts new strain on Canada’s over-stretched child care resources.
That’s the finding of a new report by the Toronto-based Childcare Resource and Research Unit and analysts at the universities of Guelph and Manitoba.
Toronto Star June 22, 2014
The status quo is bad for families, bad for children, and bad for the economy. It’s important that policy-makers, at every level of government, take note and make changes.
Need for reform appears especially pressing in light of census figures showing that the number of children, aged 4 and under, jumped by 11 per cent between 2006 and 2011. That’s the biggest increase in half a century. Statistics Canada attributed this to a slightly higher fertility rate and the fact that the children of baby boomers have now entered their own child-bearing years.