Our Children’s Future: Child Care Policy in Canada

Since 1997 Quebec has offered licensed child care services for $5 per day to its entire population. British Columbia has begun its own program of universal subsidization of licensed child care services for five and six year old children. With this in mind, and the belief that Canadian governments and the public are ready to contemplate making a major investment in improving child care services, Gordon Cleveland and Michael Krashinsky have assembled many of the key experts and activists in the area of Canadian child care policy, and asked them to consider a number of crucial questions. Our Children’s Future makes an important contribution to understanding how Canada, with its particular institutions, history, politics, and values, should design a national child care strategy. Presenting a healthy and vigorous debate among child care experts, policy analysts, and key policy makers this book attempts to answer how we are to make the transition to a future with substantially more public involvement in child care and offers suggestions as to what that child care system should look like.