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3. Early Learning and Child Care: Is Canada on Track?
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Martha Friendly, Childcare Resource and Research Unit, University of Toronto Introduction Shortly after the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1989, the Canadian Council on Children and Youth (CCCY) held a consultation to discuss the Convention’s implications for Canada. In the consultation’s Proceedings (1990), Landon Pearson, chair of the CCCY, made several significant observations. Noting that the consultation had been organized to clarify the implications of the Convention for Canadian domestic policy, she said that “we [Canada] fall short of the standards set by the Convention with respect to child care, juvenile justice, sexual exploitation, child abuse and economic support .” Furthermore, she declared that “we can be proud of our Government ’s international commitment to the concept of children as persons with human rights that must be respected. Although our status as a federated state means that the process of ratification will be slower here than in most other countries, we have been assured that the will exists at the federal, provincial, and territorial levels of government to proceed. From now on, the Convention will have to frame all policy discussions with respect to children, both at home and abroad.”1 Child care was one of the key policy issues addressed by the council’s pre-ratification consultation. Among the participants’ conclusions were the following: • Adequate child care should conform to standards set by the federal government, be based on a sound knowledge of child development and 3 Early Learning and Child Care Is Canada on Track? Martha Friendly 45 at the same time, acknowledge the practices of minority groups and indigenous people; • The government must recognize that child care policy is not simply day care. It involves such things as family responsibility leave, pregnancy and parental leaves, more flexible working arrangements and prenatal support and care; • The emphasis in any child care policy should be on facilities and parental leave provisions, not tax measures; • There was strong support among the participants for the long-term objective of a high quality, universal state-supported child care system in Canada.2 In an article on child care in the Proceedings, Friendly noted that there was—at that time—no national child care policy but that a majority of preschool-age children were in non-parental child care arrangements as their mothers participated in the paid labour force. She concluded: “It is clear that there will need to be some new directions in child care policy.… If child care policy is to be in the best interests of children , Canadian governments need to take another look at what we know about the best ways to design and implement a high quality child care system that will truly meet the needs of all Canadian families and children .”3 Governments in Canada have “taken another look” at child care not once but several times since 1990. Yet in 2007, Canada still has no national child care policy. Rather, as noted by Ken Battle in chapter 2, the Harper government has elected to provide a choice in child care allowance: an allowance that fails to overcome the problem of a national lack of affordable , quality child care. Today a higher proportion of preschool-age children are in non-parental child care than in 1990 as a considerably higher proportion of their mothers participate in the paid labour force. The number of regulated child care spaces has grown somewhat over the years, but access has remained substantially the same as it was when the Convention on the Rights of the Child was introduced, and research on quality shows that even regulated child care programs are more likely to be mediocre than excellent.4 Thus, the concern expressed about child care in 1990—that access to high-quality regulated early learning and child care is still for the few, not the majority—still pertains in 2007. This chapter’s starting place is with the Convention’s assumption, stated in article 18(3), that child care is a right and that governments have a responsibility to ensure that this right is addressed. The definition of “child care” or early learning and child care used here includes child care centres as well as other “care” services such as regulated family day care and nursery/preschools whose primary purpose is “early childhood 46 Martha Friendly [54.225.35.224] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 01:40 GMT) education.” While kindergartens are separate from child care programs in Canada...