Child-care plan missing workers

Until people are paid fairly and treated with dignity, we won’t achieve our goals

Finding an affordable child-care spot has been a grind for too many families for too long, but it took a pandemic to put the necessity and the urgency of expanding access to affordable child care into the spotlight.

COVID-19 shut down child-care centres and threw families into chaos. Many women saw no choice but to leave their jobs, resulting in the lowest participation of women in the workforce since the 1990s, undoing 30 years of progress for women in a few short months.

The 2021 federal budget promised to address the so called “she-cession” by pouring money into the care economy, including $30 billion to create a national, affordable child-care system. This was great news.

More great news: because of this funding, and the accords that have been signed with every province and territory since, fees have been reduced. In British Columbia, to give one example, the NDP government is lowering fees by 50 per cent, bringing the average cost of early learning and child care to $21 per day. There is a long way to go in achieving a truly comprehensive, inclusive, non-profit child care system in Canada. But in so many ways, the long fight for affordable child care is paying off.

But here’s the bad news: far too many families still can’t find a child-care spot. Demand is high and the funding to help keep it affordable is there, yet Canada’s affordable child-care framework is still missing one thing: child-care workers. A critical shortage of workers is putting all this progress in jeopardy.

In order to meet the federal government’s promise of 250,000 new child-care spots in the next five years, the provinces need to attract 40,000 new workers to the sector.

Quebec, a pioneer in affordable child care, faces a shortfall of nearly 10,000 early childhood educators. B.C. and Alberta will need a combined 20,000 workers to meet their goals. In Ontario, by 2026, there will only be enough $10-a-day spaces for 41 per cent of children under six. Over 227,000 families will be left wanting.

At a time when we need more child-care workers than ever, it’s almost impossible to hire them. In fact, many are exiting the profession. In 2009, a majority of qualified early childhood educators were working in sectors other than child care, and the situation is even worse today.

It’s no mystery why.

Early childhood educators — 96 per cent of whom are women — are hugely underpaid and undervalued for the work they do. Earnings averaged just $640 per week in 2019, almost 40 per cent below the average earnings in the broader economy, even though 89 per cent hold a related post-secondary credential. In many communities, they are paid poverty wages — either minimum wage or just pennies better. Low wages, combined with meagre employee benefits and pensions, are the No. 1 reason early childhood educators leave the sector, or decide not to join it at all after finishing their training.

If we want to make this generational opportunity for an affordable child-care system a success, we need to attract workers to the sector — which means the jobs have to pay a living wage. To make that happen, CUPE is calling on the federal government to work with provinces and territories to create a pay grid with a wage floor of $25 per hour.

We joined communities across the country for a national day of action on child care Wednesday, standing with workers and families to call for better pay, better quality and better access in child care.

Families across Canada have waited long enough. They need and deserve safe, affordable child care. But it won’t happen until we value — and fairly compensate — the workers who provide it.

Together we must send a clear message to our federal, provincial and territorial governments: there is no child-care system without child-care workers.