We are two weeks away from the federal budget, and the one thing we do know about it is that it will heavily focus on child care as part of this government's commitment to inclusive growth and addressing the "she-session" that the pandemic has brought about.  Because the key to combatting the effect that this economic downturn has had on women's participation in the workplace is early learning and child care, the government already started laying the plans for this in the fall economic update, but the urgency of the economic situation is likely to see an acceleration of their plans contingent, of course, on getting the buy-in of the provinces, which is going to be the real trick.

The first thing we need to remember is that early learning and child care is solely an area of provincial jurisdiction, even more so than healthcare.  That makes it difficult for any federal government to have a meaningful impact in the child care space, and why federal governments particularly Liberal ones have been signing bilateral agreements with provinces and territories to work on improving their child care situations.  After the Paul Martin Liberal government signed bilateral agreements with all of the provinces and territories on advancing a national child care program, Stephen Harper's Conservatives came to power and ripped up those agreements, so that their funding would lapse after a single year, and most provinces didn't wind up bothering to create the spaces only to have their funding dry up right away.

Instead of child care, the Conservatives offered a pittance in direct funding to families under the rubric of "choice," as Rona Ambrose and Diane Finley recited that in many families, they would rather have grandma do the babysitting rather than some institutional facility (because that is how they tend to describe provided spaces).  Additionally, their tax credit for new child care spaces was such a resounding success that it was responsible for the creation of approximately zero spaces across the country, so well done there.  And based on that record of "success," Andrew Scheer tried to promise their recreation during the last election, continuing to play up the "choice" narrative.

The problem with trying to posit this as a matter of choice for families is that there is a major supply-side problem in Canada when it comes to child care spaces, most especially high-quality spaces that are licenced by the province.  These are the kinds of spaces that the federal government has been trying to encourage the creation of more of, but this is the difficult part to do the federal government can send money to provinces, but without proper strings attached that are tied to outcomes with the creation of these kinds of spaces, and the positions of educators and child care providers.  Provinces don't like strings attached to federal transfers, and some provinces are particularly uninterested in institutionalized child care because their conservative-leaning premiers have an ideological opposition to it.  They can't keep claiming to offer "choice" to families if there aren't adequate spaces for them to choose to engage, which is why it's not enough to simply offer direct payment to families to access services that don't exist.

In the fall economic update, Chrystia Freeland made a particular point to talk about the need to invest in child care for economic growth, pointing out the success of doing so in Quebec, and as a way of counter-acting the "she-cession" of this economic downturn.  While Budgets 2016 and 2017 had invested $7.5 billion over 11 years for provinces to assist with subsidies for families and for the creation of affordable spaces, particularly for those who need them in non-traditional working hours, it's clear that more is planned because more is needed.

"Budget 2021 will lay out the plan to provide affordable, accessible, inclusive and high-quality child care from coast to coast to coast," the document states.  "This will also include enhanced support for before- and after-school care for older children in order to provide all parents with the flexibility needed to balance work and family."

This is what we should be looking for in their plans.  They got a head start in the fiscal update, putting $4.3 million per year over five years toward the creation of a Federal Secretariat on Early Learning and Child Care, whose aim is to "bring governments, experts and stakeholders together to collaborate in designing and implementing this new child care vision for Canada," on top of an additional funds going toward Indigenous child care systems.

This is where we see a debate in the policy community around what this spending should look like a "big bang" of conditional cash transfers to provinces that would mean grater federal involvement including national standards and expanded provincial programs, much in the model that Quebec has successfully created, or an "aggressive incremental" approach that would see existing tax credits reformed, and that federal dollars be consolidated in to dedicated permanent transfers to increase the supply of licenced child care spaces (as opposed to letting provinces expand unlicensed facilities).  The former has the benefit of creating the quality spaces that are in demand, but will be much harder to get provinces to sign onto, while the latter has the benefit of building on existing systems that can happen more quickly.

Suffice to say, whatever additional funds and proposals are in the budget, we need to remember that the plans will be contingent on the cooperation of provinces, and that no federal government can depend on provinces simply saying yes to "free money," because it's not actually free.  No doubt we will hear that their plans are either too prescriptive, or that they're not good enough and that they should be more aggressive, as though federal "leadership" is the kind of Green Lantern magic that will make everything happen through sheer willpower.  This government has a tough challenge ahead of it to make these quality child care spaces a reality, and I await the carrots and sticks that Freeland will plan to wield.