The impact of NDP’s child-care promise

Thestar.com
Sept. 14, 2015
By Laurie Monsebraaten

The Toronto area has among the highest daycare fees in the country with licensed centres downtown charging an average of $19,200 a year per child.

If the New Democrats are elected on Oct. 19, Leader Thomas Mulcair has promised to create up to one million new child care spots costing no more than $15 a day.

The Star asked three families with young children to assess how the NDP’s child-care platform would impact them.

High Park parents Lliam and Angela Cole

Occupation Lliam: Advertising, sales, marketing and promotion

Occupation Angela: Bank analyst

Annual family income: About $100,000

Lliam Cole has a daycare dilemma. Times two.

The new father of twins - “sleep is for the weak, or childless,” he says - is looking at a monthly daycare bill of at least $1,800 when his wife, Angela, returns to work next June. That is more than his family pays to rent the top floor of a High Park triplex.

At an annual cost of more than $21,000, Angela would be spending most of her take-home pay on care for twins Adam and Alex, says Cole, 38.

The family would be financially better off if Angela, 31, quit work and Lliam could deduct her as a dependent, he says. But Angela’s career at the bank is soaring and she can’t imagine quitting.

He says the NDP’s plan would change everything for his middle-class family, which earns too much to qualify for a full child care subsidy, but still can’t afford to pay partial fees that would cost about $90 a day.

“We could afford to stay downtown. We could afford to eventually buy a house or condo in our neighbourhood. It would be amazing,” he says.

For now, the couple is reluctantly planning to move closer to Angela’s parents in Milton so they can care for the boys after her maternity leave is over.

“What real options do we have? We really have none, to be honest,” Cole says. “Decent child care is expensive. And there’s absolutely no way I’m going to send my kids to an unlicensed babysitter.”

Flemingdon Park single mother Saleheh Jackson

Occupation: Child care worker, permanent part-time

Annual income: About $17,000

Saleheh Jackson knows she’s one of the lucky ones.

Her daughters Arianna, 8, and Surina, 4, are among just 25,000 Toronto children in low and modest-income families receiving a child care subsidy. More than 17,000 others are on the waiting list due to tight public funding.

Since Jackson and her ex-husband separated a year ago, her monthly daycare payments have dropped from $800 to zero.

“Without a subsidy, there is no way I would be able to work, so I am very grateful,” says Jackson, 28.

For low-income families like hers who are already receiving a daycare subsidy, Jackson doesn’t expect much will change if the NDP is elected and makes good on its national promise.

“It’s definitely important to have subsidies to help people like me who can’t even afford $15,” she says.

A recent city report notes that just 36 per cent of Toronto’s low-income families with children under age 5 have access to daycare subsidies, meaning many low-income parents can’t work or study to improve their family situation.

Jackson, who fills in for staff who are sick or on vacation, works between 25 and 30 hours a week. This month she enrolled in Seneca College’s two-year Early Childhood Education Co-op Apprenticeship Diploma program, which offers evening classes to accommodate students already working in the field.

“There is no child care in the evening,” she acknowledges. “But I’ll probably find some kind of babysitting. I’m sure my family will help me with my evening classes.”

With her diploma, Jackson hopes to get a better paying, full-time job in the field.

“I enjoy working with kids and being creative with them,” she says. “You kind of find your inner child again.”

Stoney Creek single mother Rachel Davidson

Occupation: Personal support worker

Annual income: About $34,000

As a personal support worker, Rachel Davidson helps frail seniors and disabled adults bathe and dress in the morning and get ready for bed at night.

It often means being on the job as early as 6 a.m. and as late as 11 p.m., with long stretches of “down time” in the afternoon and early evening. The work also includes weekend shifts twice a month.

The job is a juggle at the best of times. But for the 30-year-old new mother, the prospect of adding child care to the mix when she returns to work in November is daunting.

She likes the NDP’s promise of $15-a-day child care, but she doesn’t see how she could ever take advantage of the program.

“Licensed daycares just don’t operate when I need it,” says the Stoney Creek single parent.

“If I had a 9-to-5 job, it would be amazing,” she says. “But so many people in the home care field won’t be able to use it.”

Unionized workers in Windsor and Brampton helped create daycare centres offering evening, overnight and weekend care in the early 1990s. But those centres closed during the economic downturn of 2007-08. A municipal daycare with non-standard hours in Thunder Bay also closed recently due to financial pressures.

A recent study found that more than half of workers in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area have non-standard hours or are in temporary, contract or part-time jobs.

Until policy-makers figure out how to provide child care for these workers, Davidson says she will likely rely on her parents to look after baby Lorena on the weekends and try to team up with another area mom during the week.

“More and more people are working outside regular hours and it would be great if someone came up with a daycare plan for us,” she said.