Evidence supports daycare plan

Re: “Do homework on all the costs of daycare plan,” editorial, Nov. 25.

Years of “homework,” including a large and growing number of research studies, consistently find that public investment in high-quality, affordable child care results in large social and economic benefits. These benefits include increased female labour-force participation and economic growth (i.e. more jobs) and lower child and family poverty.

Years of “homework” also show that, among wealthy countries, Canada invests the least in child care, with provinces such as B.C. historically spending less than one-third of the international benchmark of one per cent of GDP. That’s why there are only enough licensed spaces for 18 per cent of young children in B.C. and, before B.C. Budget 2018, parent fees were too high and early childhood educator wages too low.

The cost and benefit analyses developed for the $10-a-day child-care plan are grounded in solid research. The child-care prototype sites across B.C. provide an excellent opportunity to learn even more about the actual costs of quality, affordable child care as the new system unfolds — a true example of evidence-based public policy that merits support, not unsubstantiated criticism.

Lynell Anderson

Family policy/$10-a-day researcher

Coquitlam

Read the Letters to the Editor in the Times Colonist newspaper here...