The world is changing. That’s a fact.
This was made very apparent to me a couple of weeks ago. I came across our Active Mind instructors busily pulling the strip of holes from the sides of old computer paper. One of the students asked me what the holes were for.
Yes, I can hear the groans from all of us who have used dot matrix printers and had the “pleasure” of trying to feed new paper into those machines. Getting the tractors lined up right and ensuring the printer head was in the right place were just part of the ordeal.
But we now have a generation of students who haven’t used these old devices. For them, a printer is a modified photocopier capable of printing almost instantaneous colour images.
The generational change was reinforced when I was discussing this with a colleague and his 11-year-old son the joys of using a typewriter, dot matrix printers, and fax machines. I made the comment that students now don’t call it learning to type but keyboarding. The 11-year-old pointed out he had been taught typing in grade four. Now they were learning coding.
How many of the older generation can say they were writing computer code at the age of 11? Or typing by the time they were in grade four?
I mention this because it is indicative of the changes we are undergoing as a society and highlights what is likely to be a major issue for much of the federal election campaign – childcare.
My mother was a pre-school teacher. She taught in small regulated programs where there were very few children decades ago. The issue of spaces was an emerging concern as women were engaging more fully in the workforce.
When I was a child, families could get by on one salary. A middle-class income required 46 weeks of work per year. That is, only one parent had to work to support a family with a reasonable lifestyle.
That changed during the 1980s and 1990s. By the year 2000, a middle-class lifestyle required a family to work 86 weeks per year – or, to put it in slightly different terms, both parents had to have jobs – with one working 52 weeks and the other at least 34 or part-time. In 2021, we are at a point where a middle-class lifestyle requires both parents to work full-time.
But someone must take care of the kids. If both parents are gone from 9 to 5 every day, someone else must be doing the daily parenting. For the wealthy, this might be a nanny. For some families, it might be grandparents – which is a time-honoured social structure.
For most Canadian families, it means childcare, which is an expensive option. The cost ranges across the country from a low median rate of $175 per month in Montreal to a high median rate of $1,675 in Toronto. Vancouver is around $1,450 per month and Prince George would appear to be about $900 per month.
A rate of $900 per month per child translates to $10,800 per year. For a family of two, that is $21,600 – which is a sizeable portion of any family’s budget. And even when the kids get to be school aged, the cost only drops to $400 per month.
So what do the federal parties propose?
Both the Liberals and the NDP appear to be serious about changing the fee structure to provide $10/day childcare across the country. For our family with two kids that would drop the cost to roughly $5,200 per year – a savings of 75 per cent. Although it is a promise we have heard before from both federal and provincial politicians, it would appear, based on the negotiated agreements so far, to finally be a reality.
The Conservatives are going with their tried-and-true approach to every problem by offering tax credits. In this case, it is a refundable tax credit meaning money back if the amount exceeds your income tax. But according to their party platform, for someone earning $30,000 per year, it will only result in $6,000 for childcare – a far cry from the cost of looking after two kids.
Unfortunately, none of the plan appear to be addressing the lack of capacity in the system. There simply aren’t enough spaces at any price.
So maybe a bold leader will finally step up and suggest a better alternative. Let’s recognize the world has changed and our educational expectations have to change with it. Research has shown every $1 spent on early childhood education pays back $6 later in life. Maybe it is time to incorporate early childhood education into the school system. For everyone who wants it, maybe school should start a lot earlier than 5 years of age.
The benefits will outweigh the costs in the long run.
