x
oe

/ omen’s equality demands a
fundamental change in the
present economic system. It

: also demands a fundamen-

tal in how domestic labour and child

rearing is organized. It is in this context
that changes to Canada’s child care sys-
tem must be examined.

Child care is about more than free-
ing up women to enter the labour
force. It is about a system of early
childhood education which reflects a
society’s commitment to its children.
Will we have a society which allows the
care of children to be subject to the
vagaries of the market place and profit
making? Or will we have a system
which recognizes the crucial impor-
tance of proper care for our future?

These are not questions which will
go away. Women are in the labour
force to stay — a crucial aspect in the
struggle for equality. While 57 per cent
of mothers in two-parent families work,
leaving 1,210,000 pre-school children in
need of care, only 172,000 licensed spa-
ces are available. This crisis in child

The
Chi d Care
Sa betage
Leanne MacMillan

wo eraser ETN

ories’

care and active organizing by the
labour and women’s movements forced
Brian Mulroney to promise the crea-
tion of a Canada-wide child care plan
in the 1984 federal election.

However, the Tory response, called
the National Strategy on Child Care,
unveiled last December, is an unmiti-
gated disaster. It fits with the overall
corporate agenda for change which
includes greater economic, political and
military integration with the United
States. The Tory view of child care fits
in into a “free market vision” for Can-
ada. It becomes just another commod-
ity to be bought and sold on the
market.

The government’s child care strategy
must also be viewed in light of overall
attempts to restructure the interna-
tional capitalist economy. Increased
trade in services is an attempt to shore
up the falling rate of profit. As women
increasingly enter the labour market in
advanced capitalist countries, a

“market” for child care services is

created. This is a contradictory process.
On one level there is the ideology of
women as mother and defender of the
hearth, to preserve capital’s reserve
army of labour. At another level, capi-
talism is looking for new markets to
exploit. Household services such as
food and child rearing are one area for
expansion.

Economist Marjorie Cohen, in a
recent edition of CUPE Facts, notes
that the U.S. accounts for about one-
fourth of the entire world trade in ser-
vices, and is anxious to increase its
share. Non-tariff trade barriers are lim-
iting access to domestic markets by
American transnationals.

Up to this point, the United States
has been unable to have trade in servi-
ces included in the GATT

negotiations — hence the importance
of negotiating free trade in services with
Canada, where services account for
about two-thirds of our income and
about 70 per cent of Canadian jobs.
The free trade agreement gives
American firms the right to establish in
Canada and to receive the same treat-
ment as Canadian-based companies.
The Mulroney-Reagan trade pact pres-
ently excludes child care services. While
a victory for child care advocates, this
may be only short term, as the agree-
ment stresses the need to further extend
the terms of the agreement to other
service industries.

There has been a response to this
increased demand for child care cen-
tres. Economist Monica Townson,
speaking to a convention of the Onta-
rio Coalition for Better Child Care,
estimated that in 1985-1986 the number
of for-profit child care spaces increased
by 25 per cent, while non-profit centres
spaces increased by only 12 per cent.

The demand for child care is so great
that even though federally funded sub-
sidies were not available for use in
commercial centres, they have con-
tinued to grow as parents somehow
come up with the money to pay for
services, without subsidy.

Despite numerous task force
demands for a comprehensive mater-
nity leave plan to be part of a child
care strategy, there was nothing about
this in the Tory announcement.
Undoubtedly this is because business
hasn’t devised a way to profit from a
maternity leave program; it is a benefit
that can only go to the individual par-
ent.

The Tory “National Strategy on
Child Care” is sabotage in three parts.
The first involves a tax deduction
worth $2.3 billion over the next seven
years in lost government taxable
income revenues. This will supposedly
ipgive people more disposable income
to allow them to purchase child care in
the market.

The $2.3 billion in tax deductions
plus the cost of the existing Child Care
Expense Deduction will mean an addi-
tional $1.7 billion in lost revenue. The
Mulroney government is embarrassed
to admit that the largest component of
the federal child care strategy — $4
billion — is in regressive tax deduc-
tions.

Deductions are more valuable to
higher income earners than to lower
income families, and worth absolutely
nothing to people with no taxable
income, regardless of their costs.
Deductions will not cover the actual
cost of child care, even for high income
earners, and they do nothing to
increase the supply of child are spaces.

A second aspect of the changes in
the tax system is a phased-in $200-a-
year supplement to the Child Tax
Credit for children under six. In 1988
this increase will be $100 and will rise

_ lower standards for health and safety

to $200 in subsequent years. Aside
from being a token recognition and
complete undervaluation of women’s
domestic labour, this credit in no way
reflects the cost of raising children. In
addition, it is a tremendous outlay of
taxpayers’ money, without creating a
single child care space.

The third part of the strategy is a
new Child Care Act to replace the
existing cost-sharing arrangements with
the provincial governments under the
Canada Assistance Plan. The Mulronev
government estimates that this phase
will make $3 billion available to create
200,000 new child care spaces in seven
years. For the first time public money
will be available to for-profit child care
centres for operational subsidies. There
are grave concerns about active lobby-
ing by commercial child care centres to

and staff training, and generally lower
quality levels.

There is some evidence to suggest
that the move away from the Canada
Assistance Plan’s 50-50 open ended
cost sharing to the set figure of $3 bil-
lion was motivated by a desire to hold
down the costs of the development of a
child care system. In 1984-85 the fed-
eral child care subsidies to persons in
need amounted to $90 million, and in
1986, to $140 million. Subsidized child
care spaces increased by 20 per cent
each year since 1982.

Increasing pressure by child care
advocates on provincial governments to
build more spaces and loosen up on
their own subsidy eligibility criteria was
having some effect. Because of changes
to the federal guidelines in the early
1980s, 70 per cent of all Canadian fami-
lies with children under six could have
been eligible for some amount of grad-
uated CAP subsidies. The Canadian
Day Care Advocacy Association esti-
mates that if the present rate of growth
had continued, open-ended cost-shared
CAP expenditures for child care subsi-
dies would have amounted to $3.9 bil-
lion over the next seven years, and
helped create more than 300,000 new
spaces.

At the end of seven years, the Tories
propose to be spending a maximum of
$1 billion annually on child care. Any
way you look at it they’re getting a
bargain at the expense of Canada’s
children.

Studies also suggest that the
government won't be able to meet its
modest proposals. The Ontario Coali-
tion for Better Child Care has esti-
mated that it will cost the federal
government $1.7 billion more than it
has allocated even to meet its own
goals of 200,000 new spaces if it cost
shared spaces at a modest rate of $2
per day.

NAC and the Canadian Day Care
Advocacy Association are spearheading
a cross-Canada campaign to stop the
Tory Child Care Plan and to draw
attention to the need for a truly com-
prehensive, publicly funded, quality,
accessible child care system in Canada.

The latest part of the campaign
includes the Real Child Care Picture
Book — a tour of the English-speaking
provinces collecting pictures and notes
from the children affected by these
proposals. The Picture Book will be
displayed in Ottawa on April 22 so
Mulroney and his government can see
the realities for Canada’s children. This
will be accompanied by town hall meet-
ings, open houses, letter writing cam-
paigns to MPs and Mulroney,
provincial pressure, and various media
strategies. If the tour is not going to
your town, send in your own pictures
to the NAC Ottawa office to be
included in the display.

Pacific Tribune, March 9, 1988 « 5