The daycare in Denmark is a basic right. Could Canada offer the same thing?

When Lisa Petersen had her first child, she knew she would return to work for a long time. Thus, when her daughter, Naia, had a few months, the former educator of British Columbia connected to a portal led by the City of Copenhagen and selected her ideal daycare.

Shortly after, it was guaranteed the place of NAIA – full -time care and subsidized in an establishment led by qualified educators.

“It was incredibly easy,” she told CBC News. “I feel horrible to talk to people in Canada, because it was so incredible.”

Petersen’s experience with the Denmark world renowned daycare system is very different from that of many parents in Canada, which are always confronted Long waiting lists And high feesdespite A Liberal 2021 Target to reduce daycare costs to $ 10 per day, on average, by 2026.

In July, five provinces-Alberta, Ontario, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick-had not yet achieved this objective.

“We are far from a universal system,” said Morna Ballantyne, executive director of Child Care Now, a plea group.

But as Governments weigh extensions For the liberal subsidy program, there are evidence of other countries according to which the market -based approach wasting public dollars – and aggravating the quality of care.

Look | Where we are with a daycare of $ 10 per day:

Less than half of the daycare spaces promised by Ottawa created before the 2026 deadline | Power and politics

Despite her 30 billion dollars budget over five years, the federal daycare program of $ 10 per day reached less than 40% of her goal before her deadline in 2026. However, the Minister of Families Jenna Sudds said to Power & Politics that she does not care to miss the deadline.

Australia rectica

Fourteen years ago, Georgie Dent, like Petersen, was looking for a daycare for his two children.

Back to her native Sydney from abroad, she found herself in a battle for spaces, facing long journeys and Sky-elevated costs.

“We spent more in daycare than we did,” said tooth. “We had two centers in progress, two departures a day. It was crazy.”

Today, Dent manages a defense group called The Parenthood, representing parents and caregivers. She says that Australia’s efforts to subsidize care, which are similar to those in Canada, have proven to be “terribly inadequate”.

Australia has Subsidies offered Since the 1990s, payment of part of the fees billed to parents, conditional to their work activity and their income.

But similar to Canada – and unlike Denmark – Australia has largely left the development of its daycare services in the private sector.

More than 70% of Australian daycares operate for profit; international conglomerates, including the Ontario teacher’s retirement fundhave invested massively in the sector, looking for high yields.

“Paying services have become a large company in Australia,” said Matt Grudnoff, economist at Australia Institute, a reflection group. “There have been a lot of obvious prizes.”

The subsidy, meanwhile, could not make a bump, with Costs increasing in parallel with public spendingAccording to Australia Center for Policy Development.

Children’s deserts

And the subsidy did not do much to tackle “childcare deserts”, the areas where there is a shortage of care. To maximize profits, according to experts, suppliers tend to put installations where they can extend the budgets of the most distant parents: rich urban areas where care is already in abundance.

Worse, these experts say that funding is not conditional to regular quality assessments. This gave the objective operators that are not very encouraged not to maximize profits by reducing operating costs – and potentially compromise security.

“We have a sector dominated by an occasional workforce, high-filming and low remuneration,” said Lisa Bryant, defender of day care in Australia. In remote areas, as much as half of the staff Leave their positions after 12 months, allocating their decision to long hours of work and a bad salary.

In recent years, the Australian government has tried to face these shortages with Increase for daycares and bonuses to increase workers’ retention. But that was not enough.

At the same time, the Australian government has planned to remove the care grant to child care – Reorganize the system completely around public or non -profit universal care.

In recent months only, the country has been shaken by scandals on negligence and abuse in care. A city asked over 2,000 children be tested for sexually transmitted infections after an alleged aggressor has worked in dozens of centers; He has since been accused of more than 70 offenses, involving at least eight children.

“We are in a period … where there is very little confidence in our day care,” said Bryant. “And everything comes back to the way we finance them.”

Denmark’s success

Unlike Australia – and Canada – Denmark has long treated access to daycare as a basic right.

“According to law, they must find a place for you,” said Erika Naud, a Canadian living in Denmark with two children under the age of four.

Look | Long waiting lists, threats of daycare closures:

Parents, daycare suppliers frustrated by the national daycare program

While many suppliers have registered for childcare services of $ 10 per day, the waiting lists are only lengthening – a few years – and the parents are frustrated. Meanwhile, some providers threaten to withdraw from the program because they cannot increase the costs.

Nurseries like the one that his children frequent, where a few dozen children are taken care of by a team of educators, are managed by the municipality as an extension of the public education system.

If the spots of these are not available, Denmark also offers subsidized home care and modest payments to mothers who stay at home with their own children.

These subsidies are based on the income of a family, but parent costs never represent more than 25% of the operating costs of an installation.

This system provided results. Today, more than 92% of Danish children aged one to two years are in a form of child care, most children starting daycare between nine and 11 months.

Research suggests that access to high -quality childhood education can have Enormous advantages for the social and emotional development of childrenespecially for children from marginalized backgrounds.

“We have really solid research in Denmark that when children reach the second year at school, it’s over – their way is done,” said Birgit Stechmann, consultant with FOA, the Danish union representing childcare professionals. “Early childhood … has such an impact.”

Could Canada become Danish?

A public system like Denmark is not cheap. Merete Villsen, director of the early childhood care service in Aalborg, a city of approximately 220,000 inhabitants, said that the municipality spent more than $ 170 million in CDNs each year on daycare.

Katherine Oborne, a daycare expert in Australia Center for Policy Development, also warns that once private service providers are established in a sector, it is difficult to eliminate them. “It would be very difficult to win this egg,” she said.

In countries like Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, says Oborne, there is also less “social license” to treat daycare as an extension of the public school system, as they do in Denmark.

She says that this is one of the reasons why the Australian government is based on the non-profit sector to extend availability, rather than managing it in public schools.

The Canada system is not exactly like that of Australia. On the one hand, it varies considerably from one province to the other, and in many provinces, subsidies are paid directly to providers in percentage of their operating costs, not issued as good people who follow parents, as in Australia.

But defenders are still concerned about the fact that, as in Australia, the for -profit sector takes too much slice of an essential public service.

“The percentage of for -profit childcare services has increased spectacular,” said Ballantyne. Since 2013, the creation of For -profit centers have exceeded non -profit organizations by almost two to one. Governments, “continue to treat (daycare) very differently from public education,” she said.

She sees a little hope in recent plans to review the financing formulas To ensure that subsidies reduce the costs for parents and maintain quality daycare centers.

But it warns that certain provinces, such as Ontario, really reduce their contributions as the federal government increases theirs.

“This should be understood as a nation construction project … (and) an economic initiative,” she said. “I am optimistic, but I know it’s going to be much harder.”