A Toronto case study shows vacancies despite waiting lists and subsidies
Helen Ward is the President of Kids First Parents Association of Canada, a volunteer parent-run charity supporting children’s optimal well-being and parental childcare. She is a low-income single mother and holds a Bachelor of Arts with First Class honours and a Bachelor of Music. She is a frequent media commentator on child and parent issues including articles published in the Vancouver Sun, National Post and Ottawa Citizen, among others.
Canadians often hear about the apparent need for more licensed daycare spaces. News stories about waitlists in big cities give the impression of a daycare crunch. Even when additional spaces are announced, the public is reminded that it’s never enough.1 But what if the daycare shortage is not so much a shortage of spaces as a shortage of children in them?
In this report, we examine daycare demand and availability using the city of Toronto as a case study. Vacancy data shows that rather than a shortage of spaces in Toronto, there has actually been a surplus.
This evidence is routinely obscured through use of three proxy measures of daycare demand that overstate true demand. In response, government funding for daycare has risen faster than enrolment.
All children need early learning and child care (ELCC) twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. That need is met in a variety of ways including by parents themselves. Public policy, however, usually focuses on one type of care— institutional daycare—to the disadvantage of those who prefer other forms of ELCC.
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For example see Hammer, K. (2014, June 23). Daycare demand soaring in Toronto region as YMCA adds more spaces. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/ymca-to-expand-daycare-services-in-the-gta/article19304470/