Publicly funded child care is the most cost-effective route to gender equality and economic prosperity, says Oxfam Canada in a report that urges federal parties to put the issue on the ballot in next fall’s federal election.“Despite considerable evidence pointing to the benefits of child care for women’s economic equality, for economic growth and for children’s development, many governments fail to recognize child care as a public good and adequately resource it,” says the international development agency in a report being released Tuesday.“Families are left struggling to cover expensive child care fees, millions of women are kept out of the workforce, and half of the world’s children go without pre-primary education,” adds the report, titled: “Who Cares? Why Canada needs a public child care system.”In Canada, where most parents scramble to find — and pay for — quality licensed care, the report calls on federal parties to commit to spending an additional $8 billion annually within 10 years to expand services, improve the child-care workforce and lower parent fees by at least 40 per cent.Under the current plan, Ottawa is committed to spending a total of $7.5 billion by 2028 or just under $1 billion annually. The report’s call for more spending is based on a 2017 International Monetary Fund study that found a 40-per-cent reduction in child-care costs would bring 150,000 highly-educated stay-at-home mothers into the workforce and boost Canada’s GDP by 2 percentage points, or $8 billion a year.“Evidence shows that public child care is fiscally affordable because increases in parental employment bring in more tax revenues and result in reduced public spending on social assistance and other benefits,” the report notes.The investment would also help boost wages and working conditions of chronically low-paid early childhood educators, and end poor job satisfaction and labour ...
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