As Ontario nears a child care deal, can it help end the she-cession?

Jordan Time has no meaning anymore. So you can be forgiven for thinking that this happened either five days or five years ago.

News Clip 1 We are ready to work together provinces and territories right across the country to deliver $10 A day high-quality childcare for every family in Canada.

Jordan That plan was announced by the federal government almost exactly one year into the pandemic in April of 2021. After parents across the country had a full 365 days or more to realize exactly how impossible it is to fully function without affordable, reliable childcare. Of course, the wait has been longer than a year. Canadians outside of Quebec have been watching for decades, lobbying mostly unsuccessfully for a National Child Care Plan. Announcing that plan is one thing though, implementing it is another but one by one over the summer, and the fall in the winter provinces and territories, sat down with the feds and hammered out deals.

News Clip 2 This means that parents in Alberta will see a reduction in their fees of an average of 50% in early 2022.

News Clip 3 With a $3.2 billion investment from the federal government over the next five years. We can and we’ll get to $10 a day of British Columbia

News Clip 4 We have secured $66.1 million over the next five years for early learning and childcare in Nunavut.

News Clip 5 Today New Brunswick joins nine other provinces and territories as we build our Canada Wide early learning and childcare system, working towards $10 A day childcare for children right across the country

Jordan Until there was just one province left standing Ontario. With reports leaking this week that a deal may be close between the Feds and Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government. We could see all of Canada covered with real affordable childcare. By this time next year. It would be a milestone achievement for the country. In the meantime, though, what has the past two years without it cost us? As schools close, daycares open and shut staffing shortages, make quality care difficult to find even at exorbitant prices, and the burden falls on? Well, who do you think the burden fell on?

I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. This is the big story. Carolyn ferns is the Public Policy and Government Relations Coordinator at the Ontario Coalition for better child care. Hey, Carolyn.

Carolyn Ferns Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Jordan You’re very welcome. I’m glad that we are talking to you today because it’s in the news that Ontario may finally be nearing a childcare deal the last province to do so how big a deal. Is this plan as it’s rolled out across Canada over the last, I guess 10 months or so now?

Carolyn Ferns Yeah.Well, the Federal childcare plan, you know, really has the possibility of being a real game-changer for families. I mean, the goal is to get childcare fees down to $10 a day. For families. The goal just for this year is to cut childcare fees in half. So right now in Ontario, parents are paying well over $1,000 a month for childcare, sometimes $2,000 a month for childcare. So the difference that it’s going to make for parents’ pocket bucks is huge, right? You know what the goal of the federal childcare program also is to make childcare programs more stable and to improve their quality and to create more spaces for families that need them. So we’ve seen how important childcare is in the pandemic, and it’s going to be essential to our social and economic recovery. So really, I don’t think that this plan can come soon enough. And here in Ontario, we’ve been waiting and waiting for our provincial government to sign on. They still haven’t signed on so far. And we’re the very last province as you said, you know, that’s a holdout here. So I hope that the Ontario government will sign on as soon as possible.

Jordan Why is childcare so important, particularly as we come out of the pandemic, hopefully, come out of the pandemic?

Carolyn Ferns Yes, hopefully. Well, it’s been incredibly important during the pandemic. And we’ve seen that in the first wave of the pandemic, when, you know, so many things were closing down. Communities realized very quickly, that they needed to have emergency childcare for anything else to keep going for emergency services, essential services to remain open. They needed to be emergency childcare. You know, during this pandemic, many more people realized just how important childcare is, you know, any employer who was on a zoom call with an employee who had a toddler crawling all over their head realized that childcare, you know, Ontario can’t work at work without it. And of course, you know, we’ve had, from a work perspective, really to pandemics people who are able to work from home, and if their parents had been trying to work from home with their children, and then folks, of course, that are so important to our communities who you know, whose jobs cannot be done from home, be they healthcare workers, or, or grocery store workers.

And so childcare for those folks, has been really important. I think that, you know, after wave one of the pandemic, when we saw how important childcare was, that’s where we started to see suddenly, government action, right across the country, you know, and the federal government, you know, in their budget last year, finally, bringing forward a national childcare system that of course, advocates have called for over 50 years. And so I think that it’s going to be really important as we move forward to make sure that childcare centers, first of all, that they survived the pandemic, because we’ve seen a lot of them close, but that we start providing more affordable care for families and expand spaces to.

Jordan In a moment, we’ll talk about how we’ve moved through the past couple years and where that burden has fallen, and what’s been done about it. But first, when you look at this plan, or even just when you look at government child care plans, or lack of them in the past, what does government often get wrong about childcare when they’re writing these plans or trying to come up with solutions?

Carolyn Ferns I’d say that the biggest thing that governments, you know, be it different provincial governments over the years or the federal government, even now, I think something that needs more attention is the childcare workforce, often from politicians point of view, and the headline is $10, day childcare even now, right? And it’s about affordable childcare for families, right? Because that’s what gets parents to buy into this and see, you know, that this being a positive outcome, that’s the outcome we want. But to be able to do that, to be able to have childcare programs run at all, you need to have people to work in them. And if you want those childcare programs to be good, you need to be sure that there are qualified people working in those programs, early childhood educators, and you have to make sure that those people aren’t turning over all the time and leaving to go and work at a Costco or, or a Tim Hortons where they could make more money, to be honest. So dealing with the childcare, workforce crisis, and addressing recruitment and retention and childcare is essential to be able to make any program work.

As a parent, it can speak to how important that is because, you know, when my son started going to infant childcare, and his very few, you know, first words he had, you know, Julia was one of his very first words who was the early childhood educator that he had bonded with. And when I said, you know, we’re in the morning, if I said, I didn’t say, we’re going to school, or we’re going to childcare, I said, we’re going to see Julia, right. And so if Julia, you know, left her job or couldn’t, you know, burned out or wasn’t able to make a go and make a career in childcare? You know, what does that mean for the children who have bonded to that educator to make quality childcare, you have to make sure that you’re dealing with the workforce. And that’s something that I think that every provincial federal government that’s working on this issue should take much more seriously.

Jordan If there’s one thing that’s continually shocked me, over the past two years, it has been learning just how much or more accurately how little, I guess, people doing some invaluable work are actually making and I mean, that from, you know, first it was nurses a week ago, I learned that respiratory therapists can make less than nurses. What do early childhood educators typically make? And, you know, to your point, why are they sometimes better off at a Costco?

Carolyn Ferns Well, here in Ontario, you know, the average wage for early childhood educators is less than $20 an hour, and some ECs are making minimum wage. And those are people with diplomas and degrees in early childhood education. They’re qualified and early childhood education as a profession, as a professional college that regulates, is a regulated profession in Ontario. So, you know, their wages are, are really low. And the other thing we’ve seen in the pandemic is that their jobs have become much harder as well. And we’re seeing people burnout, you know, there’s always this belief that, you know, early childhood educators, you know, they don’t go into it for the money, you know, they do it for you know, the love of working with the children all is that’s true, but they also need to be able to put food on the table. They need to be able to afford childcare for themselves. Sometimes they you know, and then they need to be able to, to make a living.

Jordan They say the same things about journalists too, but I still want to get paid.

Carolyn Ferns Yeah, no, no Exactly, I’ve actually I had a one time I had an MPP say that to my face, say, Well, you know, but about a bit early child educator pay Oh you know, but they love it. And I said, Well, I hope you love your job too Sir. But you know, I think you also like to be paid well for it. And you should. But what we’ve seen in the pandemic as well is that, of course, now, so much of ECs work is now you know, cleaning and screening, and sanitizing toys, you know, five times a day and, and what we’ve heard from people is that, you know, those things, because there is no funding to hire on additional staff to take on those roles. The people that are working in program are now spending so much of their time doing those things, instead of interacting with the children, which is what they want to be doing and what they should be doing. So you know, that underfunding of childcare, it really does undermine quality for kids. And when we talk about, you know, decent work for educators, it’s because early childhood educators working conditions, our children’s learning conditions, right, and that’s the only way that we create quality childcare.

Jordan Let’s move on a little bit from the ECE stage, because I want to ask you about the burden over the past couple of years. So let’s go back to the spring of 2020. You know, it was March Break schools across the province across the country began to close at that time, we had zero idea when they might reopen. What did your work tell you about who was going to be impacted by that?

Carolyn Ferns Well, we could see really quickly the impact that this was having on on parents, and then, of course, you know, while I think that that, you know, burden fell on all all parents and caregivers, you know, you could see in the job figures as they started to come out that the disproportionate impact it was having on on women and on Mothers labor force participation. Even before you know, those hard numbers started to come out, you know, I could see this, you know, this tsunami, because all sorts of parents and, you know, mothers that I was in touch with, were saying, you know, what, what am I going to do? You know, I’ve it’s been two weeks, I’m trying to do my job, I’m trying to, you know, make snacks all the time, and I don’t feel like my child’s getting any attention. And my job’s not getting done, you know, what am I going to do? And then we saw that, that hit and, you know, an economist Armine Yalnizyan coined the term, the she-cession. And you know, those job figures, as they’ve come out month after month have borne that out that it’s, you know, the disproportionate impact that the pandemics having on women’s work, and that it will take, you know, years to get that, you know, recovered. The federal government, to their credit, had saw the same thing happening. And that’s why and Chrystia Freeland budget speech, she said it quite clearly that that is why they were investing in childcare and moving forward on a national childcare plan, because it was, you know, one important way that the government could, could try to ensure a feminist response and recovery from the pandemic,

Jordan In terms of child care, even in pre pandemic times. I’m curious if you know, how much of the burden typically falls on women? And I’m really curious to know if that’s changed in any meaningful way over the last several years, as we’ve started to acknowledge this?

Carolyn Ferns Well, you know, I think that, you know, even before the pandemic, of course, it was, you know, well known that the childcare burden did, you know, continue to fall disproportionately on on women and mother’s a few years ago in Ontario, there was the provincial government had a whole committee and initiative, looking at the the gender wage gap, right, and what drove it, and caregiving was a huge seen as being a huge part of this, you know, the unequal burden of caregiving as so much so that after the committee’s, you know, travels around the province and talking with, you know, 1000s of people about how to solve the gender wage gap, their number one recommendation was a universal childcare system, that that was the most important thing to act on as quickly as possible. And unfortunately, it seems to took, you know, a few more years in a pandemic for that penny to drop for many more people. But now, you know, we’re seeing that there is an understanding of that, not just from the federal government, but provincial governments right across the country, as well as the business community now we have the Chamber of Commerce calling for investment and childcare. So from an Ontario perspective, though, what’s frustrating is that the penny seems to have dropped for almost everybody, except for the Ontario government. Who’s still seem to be acting in the sort of old way of thinking on this and, and not really stepping up to do what’s needed to move forward on childcare.

Jordan Have you guys been talking to them about that? What’s that conversation been like trying to push this over the hump?

Carolyn Ferns It’s difficult because, you know, I think that what we’ve heard from the Ontario government, and you see this, even in the, the media statements from from Minister Lecce, and from Premier Ford, you know, they seem to be okay with things in the status quo. And they would like to have more federal funding for it. You know, they say, Yes, we’re open to getting federal funding, but we want essentially things to stay as they are. And that’s a problem. Because really, to move childcare forward, what we need to be doing is publicly funding the programs directly, it can’t be about a few more dollars into a tax credit. And it can’t be just leaving this sort of market hodgepodge the way it is, because it hasn’t worked. And we’ve seen that hasn’t worked for years. Right? It’s a matter of trying to shift that perspective, from the provincial government, and really, to know what their plan is. I think that that’s something that’s been lost in all this, which is, what would the Ontario government do with $10.2 billion? You know, they seem to have dodged that question now for months. And it’s something that I would like to know the answer to.

Jordan what do we know, right now, you mentioned some numbers a little bit ago about the concrete impact that the pandemic and child care crisis has had on Canadian women’s careers and, and what won’t we know until it plays out in the years and decades to come?

Carolyn Ferns Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, there will be a long, long term impact. I mean, we see that from, you know, from research that’s been done on the gender pay gap, that is that the longer that, you know, a woman stays out of the pay labor force, or the, you know, the impact that that has, over years, you know, going into retirement when you, you know, then retire with a much lower income and earnings over the years. So there’s going to be a long-term impact of that, for sure. You know, the other impact that we’ve tried to flag, even at the beginning of the pandemic is how important a childcare program is going to be for a generation of young children that have been born in in a crisis. And, you know, I’ve heard from lots of parents who say, you know, they had a baby in the 2020, and, and that their child has not had the opportunities to socialize with other kids, and how important that’s going to be to make sure that we’re providing really quality early learning and childcare, that understands what families as a whole have been through. In all of this.

Jordan What will childcare providers have to do about that in the years to come? Obviously, hopefully, the care itself gets better and more affordable, and the wages improve. But what needs to change? If anything in in the caregiving situations for kids who to your point have been isolated at this point for much of their lives?

Carolyn Ferns Yeah. Well, I think that, you know, in terms of the pedagogy, I think that early childhood educators, they’re doing amazing and creative things in dealing with the pandemic, and even saw that myself as a, as a parent in that first wave when childcare was closed down, it was, you know, I think only a few days, after everything closed, I got an email from my son’s childcare center saying, oh, you know, we’re having virtual preschool so everyone can come on. And his preschool teacher made a video explaining about the pandemic in ways that we’re using words and things that he could understand in ways that I had never even thought of. So it’s amazing the work that early childhood educators have done in all this. And I think, though, that just to go back to an earlier point, and I but just to hammer it home, really, it’s about making sure that that those qualified educators stay working in licensed childcare. And that, you know, for kids, that it’s stable, it’s stable quality childcare with the same early childhood educators day to day so that they’re not, you know, being shuffled from this room to that room because we’re short-staffed, and maybe the AEC that they were playing with last week, they never see again, I mean, that’s really hard for a child. So I think that, you know, it’s really addressing that workforce crisis and childcare is going to make such a big difference.

Jordan The last thing I want to ask you about is what happens next and what can be done for the moms who have lost two years of their career, you know, hopefully, knock on wood, and it probably helps that there’s an election coming up that Ontario gets this deal done with the federal government. Once that’s done, how can these women catch back up and is any level of government talking about how to support them in that.

Carolyn FernS Yeah, I think that there could be I think there definitely could be more than to talk about that. And I never like to say, after the after the pandemic, can we even say that yet? But, you know, when it does come to that, yes, I think there’s going to be a challenge for people re-entering the workforce, and, and, and all of those things. And so I think that making sure that we have affordable childcare there is going to make a big difference for families, because, of course, you know, that’s the even doing the math is what a lot of parents that keeps a lot of parents out of licensed childcare, because they realize that so much of their salary is going to be going to pay for childcare. So if it’s a parent who’s trying to figure out, you know, oh, I could I could do you know, part time or I could take this position full time. But how could I possibly pay for licensed childcare? Right, that’s why we need to address the fees right away, right. So that so that math makes sense for more families to be able to get back into the labor force. It’s an election year. So I hope that the Ford government is feeling the pressure to, to sign on to that agreement. But it’s also an election year. And if they don’t, I think that, you know, I know a lot of parents are really frustrated with how much of an afterthought the Ford government is treated childcare. So I see this being a pretty hot election issue either way.

Jordan It is amazing how parenthood can turn you into a single issue voter sometimes.

Carolyn Ferns Yes, definitely.

Jordan Carolyn, thank you so much for this very insightful.

Jordan Thank you. Thanks so much.

Jordan Carolyn Ferns of the Ontario Coalition for better childcare. That was the big story. For more from us, you can head to thebigstorypodcast.ca Where sometimes, if you listen to the episodes in the background, you can hear the result of me not having affordable quality childcare over the past two years. You can also talk to us on Twitter @TheBigStoryFPN or you can email us click here! You can find this podcast in any podcast player. You can ask for it on your smart speaker simply by saying play the big story podcast. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.