Relatively free daycare.

[iverglas]

14. up here in the land of milk and honey ...

http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/sc/ei/benefits/maternityparental.shtml

Employment Insurance Maternity and Parental Benefits

Employment Insurance (EI) provides Maternity and Parental Benefits to individuals who are pregnant, have recently given birth, are adopting a child, or are caring for a newborn.

Current application processing time: 28 days

How long will I receive EI maternity or parental benefits?

EI maternity benefits can be paid for a maximum period of 15 weeks. You cannot receive EI maternity benefits beyond 17 weeks after the expected or actual week of childbirth, whichever of the two is later.

EI parental benefits can be paid for a maximum period of 35 weeks. The payments must be made within 52 weeks of the week your child was born or the week your child was placed with you for adoption.

For most people, the basic rate for calculating EI benefits is 55% of your average insurable weekly earnings, up to a maximum amount. As of January 1, 2012, the maximum yearly insurable earnings amount is $45,900. This means that you can receive a maximum amount of $485 per week.

Maternity benefits (totalling 4 months) are exclusively for the late-pregnancy, delivery, post partum period of special needs.

Parental benefits (totalling 8 months) can be taken by either parent or divided between the parents however they like, and either simultaneously or sequentially.

So a woman could take one month before delivery and three months after, with the father taking the same three months after, each of them taking another month, and the mother taking the last three months, bringing them to seven months after the birth, just for example. This gives both parents time to spend with the child right after birth. Or the mother could take two months' maternity leave after the birth, then return to work while the father stayed home for the full eight months' parental leave. If the woman was not working and thus not eligible for either kind of EI, the father would be eligible for the full eight months. Or vice versa.

When I posted about this a couple of years ago, there were DU feminists who opposed it strenuously. I never really understood their problem. I'm not in a position to take advantage of the EI provisions (even if I paid into EI, which I don't, being self-employed -- but recently the self-employed became eligible to opt in, which is a reasonable thing in the new economy where jobs are now businesses). But if I were paying in and not ever going to be eligible to draw maternity/parental benefits, I just don't think I'd be in a huge flap about it. I pay school taxes for schools I don't use, and taxes for all kinds of other things I don't use, and protecting the ability of women in particular, given that most families are still patriarichal in that way, to re-enter the labour force after having a child, and providing working families with that little bit of security, strikes me as very good social policy.

Now, child care here, not so great. For decades, the Liberal Party promised universal childcare every election, and did nothing. It promised to end child poverty by 2002 or something, too. The Conservatives' take is different. Give parents $100 a month or something and they can use it however is best for their kids. Stay at home parents who don't even have childcare expenses can send them to soccer camp! Of course this does absolutely nothing to generate the actual childcare infrastructure that is needed, and leaves parents scrambling for scarce places. We do have a fair bit of parent co-op childcare and other non-profit arrangements.

For anyone interested:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2009/02/06/f-daycare.html

In the lead-up to the 2004 election, the Liberals promised $5 billion to create 250,000 child care spaces by 2009. The plan pointed to Quebec's now $7-a-day daycare plan as a model.

The government signed deals with each province before the government fell in the fall of 2005. In the election that ensued, the Conservatives unveiled their child care plan. Dubbed the "Choice in Child Care Plan," it provided cheques of $100 a month to parents for each child under six. Parents could spend the money as they saw fit. It would also be treated as income (attributed to the parent with the lower income) and taxed as such.

When the Conservatives won the election, they announced the child care benefit would go into effect July 1, 2006, and quickly moved to cancel the Liberal plan.

... In October 2004, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development released a report that described Canada's child care system as a chronically underfunded patchwork of programs with no overarching goals. It found that many centres were shabby and many workers were poorly trained. As well, staff turnover at many centres was very high.

Europe beats us all hands down at this game. And it's another situation where Canadians are too often too complacent: we do things so much better than south of the border, and we don't bother looking at who is doing it so much better than us.

Quebec embarked on the great social project some years ago of offering childcare to everyone who wanted it, even on a drop-in basis, for $5 a day. I'm not sure how that's working out these days.

Early childhood education is the single best investment a society can make to level the playing field for kids at a disadvantage, and at risk, i.e. to cut crime rates, just for starters. Don't build prisons, build preschools. Way better than the older extended family members or the neighbour. Childcare that offers socialization and stimulation is what succeeds and helps kids succeed.