Deal or no deal

From Parliament Hill to Queen's Park, anti-vaccine and anti-government protests have escalated to alarming levels. The pandemic’s lessons about where our collective well-being comes from are being eclipsed by frustration. In this crisis, our governments have been both quick and slow to act. But, almost 23 months into it, two clashing realities have emerged: we need governments more than ever, but more people trust them less.   

Exhibit A: Ontario still hasn’t got a deal with the feds on child care, though every other province and territory has come to an agreement. The lack of a plan, like so many other ways the pandemic has been “managed” here, is just maddening. This is in the province with the highest child care costs, years-long wait lists for licensed care, and child care workers putting in 12 hour shifts with no supports, not even rapid tests. 

Last week I gave Doug Ford and his government the benefit of the doubt, and tried to guess-timate the math that led to their strategy to say no deal to the federal government’s offer -- $10.2 billion over the next five years for child care -- and demand “a better deal”, i.e. more money. The very next day, it was revealed by the federal Minister that indeed there is an ask for more money, but the deal can’t be closed on the government’s offer or anything more because there is no articulated plan from Ontario on how they’d use the funds. A demand for more money, like a demand for fewer rules, is not a plan. It’s a tantrum.   

Any deal that gets Ontario and the feds to yes on $10.2B or more needs a plan for achieving three goals: lower costs for families, get more kids into high-quality, regulated care, and provide better wages and working conditions. Executing this plan would take Ontario from last to first place in building a system of child care that delivers what people need, when they need it, and would build back badly eroded trust along the way.

The chart below lays out how urgently needed the federal funding is everywhere, and how better is possible anywhere in Canada, because the existing child care patchwork is so awful. There’s clearly plenty of flexibility on the part of the feds. It’s clear there is a path to yes, should both parties want to get there.

See updated numbers for BC's new licensed spaces.

On March 31, 2022 access to Year One of the federal five year deal for child care expires. Doug Ford's inaction may be about to kiss $1.03B bye-bye. What could be done with that federal money to meet those three goals, if Ontario did sign on?

Everyone wants cheaper, right now. Don’t be surprised if the Ford government uses a big share of the federal funding (roughly $150M a month) to cut parent fees in half for only those who are now in licensed care starting in April or May. But that would at best reach only about 300,000 or 35% of our youngest kids. (Note, that’s on top of the 6.5 hours of free-at-point-of-use kindergartens, serving 88% of Ontario’s 4 year olds and 92% of 5 year olds.) Is that enough of a political win?

If they don’t blow it all on getting cheaper fees to those who already have care before an election, the federal funding could also increase coverage by about 100,000 licensed spaces over the next five years (up to about half of our 0-5 year olds). Of course timing, again, is everything.

And all the talk about spaces and costs skips over the bit about the actual care. By which I mean the workers who provide the care who have been critically underpaid for years. In Ontario, we pay garbage collectors and pet groomers more than we pay child care workers. The fed package, as it stands, could add an average $5,000 a year to the average child care worker’s salary. Not a lot but better than nothing if we want care, not just spaces absent of staffing, like is increasingly the case in our hospitals and long-term care facilities.

Deal or no deal, Ontario needs a government that can plan, and execute its plan. More money in your pocket is a Conservative mantra that I thought would have clinched a deal by now. But cash alone ain’t enough. (Maybe it’s the feds holding out for a better deployment of our cash?) Whichever side is stalling, it will take more than government-as-ATM, spouting cash, to help parents, children, businesses dealing with labour shortages, and societies dealing with aging populations to reach their full potential, now and in the future. It’ll take a plan. That’s what governments are for.

Find me on Twitter @ArmineYalnizyan, and on Instagram @futureofworkers.

The Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers is supported by the Atkinson Foundation. Find more information here.