Cassidy Vaughan wants to have a second child, but says the prospect of doing so without $10-a-day child care is “scary.”
“Child care can drown you,” she said. “That’s like, a mortgage payment, or you know, a car payment.”
The pharmacy technician was able to return to the workforce last year after finding a subsidized daycare spot for her son, Parker, at the Natural Wonders Early Learning Centre in Swift Current, Sask.
Vaughan pays roughly $220/month. She estimates the same daycare spot would cost at least $700/month without the federal-provincial program.
With two children, she’d be on the hook for at least $1400/month, compared to about $440.
Like many other mothers who work outside the home, Vaughan says affordable child care — and more specifically the continuation of the $10-a-day daycare subsidy — is her top issue this federal election.
“If this extra huge payment gets put on to people again, it will financially cripple people.”
Federal parties on child care
In 2021, the Liberal government, with support from the NDP, launched a $30 billion, five-year early learning and child-care system to create 250,000 new affordable spaces. It said the plan would cut the costs of those spaces to $10 a day by 2025-26. Every province and territory signed on except Quebec, where affordable child care was already available.
The federal government says families are saving from $2,800 to $16,200 a year per child, depending on where they live in the country.
Critics say the plan hasn’t met its targets yet due to labour shortages, inflation and the program’s complexity. Parents have complained about long waitlists and the program only applying to young children who go to licensed daycares full-time.
This year, Ottawa signed agreements with 11 of 13 provinces and territories to extend and raise child-care funding to 2031. The federal government says it’s on track to meet its goals, with provinces and territories planning to add 150,000 additional spaces by next year.
The Saskatchewan government says it’s still negotiating the terms of the deal.
Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says that if his party forms government, it will honour the agreements with provinces, but slammed the program, saying it has led to fewer child-care spaces, private daycares shutting down and money being wasted on bureaucracy.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, when asked Tuesday if Liberal programs like dental and pharmacare would be at risk if he is elected prime minister, said ‘we will protect these programs,’ before going on to discuss his views on child care.
“We’re going to give more freedom and flexibility to parents, providers, and provinces to support the child care of all the kids,” Poilievre said. He didn’t explain how.
“Why do we have worse child care today than when the Liberals took office? Because they’ve imposed top-down, government-knows-best rules that have shut down private daycares that don’t meet the government-knows-best model.”
As for the NDP, it is claiming credit for the plan and accusing both Poilievre and Carney of planning cuts.
“New Democrats made affordable child care a reality after the Liberals spent decades making and breaking promises,” NDP families, children, and social development critic Leah Gazan said in a statement.
No need to start from scratch
Regina mother-of-two Shayla Dietrich wants every federal leader to commit long-term to the $10-a-day child-care program.
She and her husband, Matthew, experienced first-hand the financial relief of subsidized daycare. Their son Henry started in a home-based daycare at $800/month. At the time, Dietrich’s husband had just returned to university and the cost of daycare was stretching their budget.
“We mostly dipped into savings,” she said.
Shayla Dietrich, 36, pays $220/month for her son’s subsidized daycare. She wants federal leaders to make a long-term commitment to the Canada-wide early learning and child care system.
They managed to get Henry into a subsidized program at the university and their monthly daycare cost dropped to about $220. Dietrich says it was a game-changer.
Now Dietrich is on maternity leave for their second baby and the couple isn’t sure whether they’ll land a second spot in the same daycare.
She says affordable child care is her top election issue because it trickles down to everything else in life.
“If I’m concerned about the economy and my local small businesses, then I’m concerned about affordable childcare because it’s all connected right now,” she said.
She also sees it as a fundamental issue for women’s equality and independence.
“If someone wants to stay home with their kids, that’s awesome, and they should be able to choose to do so. They shouldn’t be forced to do so because they can’t find affordable child care.”
Dietrich knows there are issues plaguing the current program, but adamantly opposes replacing it.
In the last election, then-Conservative leader Erin O’Toole vowed to phase out the program in favour of a tax credit targeting low-income families.
“It’s a young program, so obviously it needs work, but it also needs a commitment to do the work,” Dietrich said. “I don’t think we need to start over. And I think parents and moms and women and children, we can’t afford to start over. We need to keep moving forward with this.”
Cassidy Vaughan agrees. She says the early education system isn’t just about lowering fees.
She recently joined the board of her son’s daycare and sees a national program as an investment in more spaces, and better working conditions and wages for employees. She says a tax credit wouldn’t do any of that.
“This $10/day subsidy is great, but none of that even matters if we don’t help our [early childhood educators] and have those people that want to work in those places and continue taking amazing care of our kids.”
The issue hits home for her. Vaughan’s husband was an early childhood educator for six years and ultimately quit for financial reasons.
“He wasn’t getting paid enough, you know, just very underappreciated in general. And so he had to leave that sector because it just wasn’t working out for us financially,” she said.
While she wants to save money, she also wants to invest in a better early education and child-care system.
