Child care as citizenship right? Toronto in the 1970s and 1980s

Canadian Historical Review

Volumn 86, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 285-315

  Mahon, Rianne ^a  

^a CARLETON UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33750989803     PISSN: 00083755     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/can.2005.0110     Document Type: Review

References (107)

1. On the 'crisis of care,' see Mary Daly and Jane Lewis, "The Concept of Social Care and the Analysis of Contemporary Welfare States,' British Journal of Sociology 51, no. 2 (2000): 281-98
2. The choice of Toronto raises the question of its uniqueness within the Canadian context. Reports from social planning councils across the country in the 1960s suggest a parallel growth of need in other urban centres. After the passage of CAP, however, only in Ontario and Alberta did municipalities retain a role in organizing child care. Under the Lougheed government, the Alberta government centralized control. See Tom Langford, 'From Social Movement to Marginalized Interest Groups: Advocating for Quality Childcare in Alberta, 1965-86,' in Changing Childcare: Five Decades of Childcare Advocacy and Policy in Canada, ed. Susan Prentice (Halifax: Fernwood Press, 2001), 62-80
3. Despite the lack of jurisdiction, Vancouver also came to play a role. See Linda McDonnell, 'Day Care: For Better and For Worse,' and Sandra Griffin, 'Addendum: Childcare in British Columbia, 1988-1990,' in Canadian Childcare in Context: Perspectives from the Provinces and Territories, Alan R. Pence, coordinating editor (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 1992), 1:19-42 and 1:87-101
4. See Susan Prentice, 'Militant Mothers in Domestic Times: Toronto's Postwar Childcare Struggle' (PhD diss., York University, 1993)
5. Neil Smith is generally credited with having introduced this concept. See 'Homeless/Global: Scaling Places,' in Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change, ed. J. Bird, B. Curtis, T. Putnam, G. Robertson, and T. Tickner (London, New York: Routledge, 1993). It refers to actors' capacities to shift scales of action - downward or upward - seeking new allies or other new sources of leverage
6. In his classic essay 'Citizenship and Social Class,' Marshall noted that citizenship is a status 'bestowed on those who are full members of the community. All who possess the status are equal with respect to the rights and duties with which the status is endowed' (emphasis added). In Sociology at the Crossroads (London: Heinemann, 1963), 87
7. See Margaret Little, No Car, No Radio, No Liquor Permit: The Moral Regulation of Single Mothers in Ontario 1920-1997 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998)
8. Available since 1971, it requires receipts from the caregiver, thus excluding parents forced to rely on the informal sector. It covers a modest portion of the cost, and it benefits higher-income earners the most
9. See Sylvia Bashevkin, Welfare Hot Buttons: Women, Work, and Social Policy Reform (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), for a discussion of this new policy and its implications for women
10. Prentice, 'Militant Mothers in Domestic Times.'
11. Day care is not 'new' in the sense that, since the 1800s, 'day nurseries,' organized and funded by religious and secular charities, have existed for mothers who had no choice but to work outside the home. What was 'new' was substantial public support, which aimed at the expansion of affordable child care for mothers whose services were needed in the wartime labour market
12. Susan Prentice, 'Kids Are Not for Profit: The Politics of Childcare,' in Social Movements/Social Change: The Politics and Practice of Organizing, ed. Frank Cunningham, Sue Findlay, Marlene Kadar, Alan Lennon, and Ed Silva (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1988), 7
13. Prentice, 'Kids Are Not for Profit,' 13
14. Metropolitan Toronto, Comprehensive Review of the Childcare Report: Facing the Future (Toronto: Community Services Department, 1990), ii
15. According to Petr Varmuza, 'Through employing all trained staff in the municipal centres and permitting operators to do the same, through the consulting support to non-profit and commercial operators and finally through development of criteria that operationalize the DNA we have attempted to improve the quality of service on a provider by provider basis.' E-mail communication with the author, 21 Mar. 2003
16. Metro also gave parents the right of exit: As of 1983, subsidies followed the child, rather than being allocated to providers. As we shall see, this was a contentious move strongly opposed by the chief representatives of the citizenship model. See Metropolitan Toronto, Blueprint for Childcare Services: Realistic Responses to the Need (Toronto: Toronto Day Care Planning Task Force, 1986)
17. While inadequate, these measures could be viewed as tentative steps toward implementing the 'neighbourhood hub' model, which child-care advocates had come to support. Prentice, 'Kids Are Not for Profit,' 122
18. Public centres accounted for 23.5 per cent of total spaces in the city in the mid-1980s. Metropolitan Toronto, Blueprint for Childcare Services, table 5. Non-profit providers accounted for 67 per cent of the licensed spaces in Toronto in 1989. City of Toronto, Planning for Day Care in the City of Toronto: Past and Future Initiatives (Toronto: Planning and Development Department, 1991), 10
19. As in many services, wages account for a high percentage of costs. Public support is therefore necessary to provide an affordable high-quality service paying decent wages
20. By 1981 the rate for Canada had risen to 51.0 per cent, Toronto 59.5 per cent, and the rest of Ontario 52.4 per cent. I am grateful to Ann Pagnin, Department of Community Services, Toronto, for providing me with the data, compiled from the relevant Statistics Canada catalogues and City of Toronto summary reports from original Statistics Canada data
21. By 1981, the Canadian rate had risen to 16.6 per cent, and 15.1 per cent for the rest of Ontario, while Toronto's had soared to 20.1 per cent
22. Social planning councils in urban centres across Canada - from Edmonton to Halifax - began to map the need for non-parental child care in the sixties. These local initiatives were supported by the Canadian Welfare Council's Daycare Project, headed by Lillian Thomson. See Alvin Finkel, 'Even the Little Children Cooperated: Family Strategies, Childcare Discourse and Social Welfare Debates, 1945-1975,' Labour/le travail 36 (1995): 91-118. Toronto's committee included Anne Barstow (who would go on to play an important role in the Advisory Council established in the aftermath of the fights to defeat the province's proposed day-care reforms), and Fiona Nelson (who would subsequently support the use of vacant classrooms by non-profit childcare centres within the Board of Education of Toronto)
23. Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto, Day Care in Toronto (Toronto: Social Planning Council, 1968), 2
24. Byron Miller combines the scalar approach being used in this paper with Sidney Tarrow's work on the 'political opportunity structure' to explore why social movements choose to mobilize at one scale over another. A political opportunity structure includes (1) openness or closure of formal political institutions at each scale; (2) the presence of potential allies at each scale; and (3) divisions among the elites at each scale. See B. Miller, 'Political Empowerment, Local-Central State Relations and Geographically Shifting Political Opportunity Structures: Strategies of Cambridge, Massachusetts Peace Movements,' Political Geography 13, no. 5 (1994): 393-406
25. Stefan Kipfer and Roger Keil, 'Toronto Inc.? Planning the Competitive City in the New Toronto,' Antipode (2002): 227-64. See 239
26. Susan McGrath, 'The Politics of Truth: A Case Study of Knowledge Construction by the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto, 1957-1988' (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1999), 105
27. Reformers won a number of seats on Toronto council, and 'Red Tory' Mayor Crombie (1972-78) was followed by Left-populist Mayor John Sewell
28. The committee's name changed to Community Services and Housing in the early 1980s, around the same time that child care replaced daycare among those in the know
29. Metro Social Services and Housing Committee, 30 July 1974; Commissioner of Community Services, memo to the Community Services and Housing Committee, 9 Sept. 1983, file September 1983, 'Daycare Service Priorities,' Daycare - Metro Toronto (hereafter cited as DMT), Urban Affairs Library Committee Reports Collection
30. Wendy Atkin, 'Babies of the World Unite: The Early Day-Care Movement and Family Formation in the 1970s,' in Family Matters: Papers in Post-Confederation Canadian Family History, ed. Lori Chambers and Egar-André Montigny (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 1998), 62-3
31. Local Initiatives Program (LIP) and Opportunity for Youth (OFY) grants were used to fund local child-care initiatives, among other things, in different parts of the country, as documented in the two Alan Pence volumes, Canadian Childcare in Context: Perspectives from the Provinces and Territories (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 1992)
32. See Prentice, 'Kids Are Not for Profit'; and Irene Kyle, 'An Historical Overview of Childcare in Ontario,' Canadian Childcare in Context, 1:367-84
33. For more detail, see Kyle, 'Historical Overview,' 372-3
34. Kyle, 'Historical Overview,' 374
35. The Henderson inquiry was the first in what would become a series of provincial (and federal) initiatives aimed at balancing budgets by downloading responsibility. On the downloading proposed by Henderson's committee, see Chief Administrative Officer's Department, Analysis of the Report of the Special Program Review Committee, 2 Jan. 1976, Urban Affairs Library
36. Maxwell Henderson, Report of the Special Program Review Committee (Toronto: Queen's Printer, 1975), 294
37. This demand would be picked up by child-care advocates in the 1980s - to no avail
38. Henderson, Report of the Special Program Review Committee, 294
39. Toronto Board of Trade, Day Care Services in Metropolitan Toronto (Toronto: Board of Trade of Metropolitan Toronto, 1979), 8
40. At this time, Metro-run centres accounted for slightly more spaces than those provided under purchase-of-service agreements
41. Commissioner of social services, 'Staffing Reductions in Municipally Operated Daycare Centres,' 29 Sept. 1977, file January-October 1977, DMT
42. Commissioner of social services, 'Response to Controller Summers' Report on Analysis of Commercial Daycare Centres' Role in Metro Toronto,' 12 Oct. 1977, file January-October 1977, DMT
43. The committee was established in 1975 out of a struggle at the Metro scale (proposed cuts to the daycare budget) that paralleled the struggle over Birch at the provincial scale
44. Of course decent staff salaries and working conditions feed into the quality equation. With decent salaries, it is possible to attract and to retain highly qualified staff and thus maintain standards
45. Metropolitan Toronto Daycare Advisory Committee, 'Recommendations Developed from Daycare Workshop held at Queen's Park on November 14, 1977,' 31 Mar. 1978, 12, recommendation 8, file November 1977-May 1979, DMT. Italics added
46. One of the points made was that many immigrant families tended to rely primarily on relatives, while Canadian-born, single-parent families lacking a subsidized spot tended to rely on babysitters
47. Project Childcare Policy Task Force, 100,000 Children: Alternatives for Service Delivery (Toronto: Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto, 1979), 2
48. Community Services and Housing Committee, Daycare Affordability Study, report no. 14, 19 Oct. 1982, file October 1982, DMT
49. Metro Toronto, Future Directions for Day Care Services in Toronto: Final Report of the Metro Toronto Day Care Planning Task Force. Presented to Metro Social Services committee, April 1981
50. The final report called for a number of measures, including regulation of the entire home-care sector, combined with financial and other supports to improve the quality of care provided. For the Social Planning Council, however, the ultimate objective was free, universal, centre-based child care
51. Metro went one step further in 1983, when it allowed subsidies to follow the child, rather than staying with the centre. This move was opposed by day-care activists and reformers on council, who were concerned that it would further destabilize an already precarious system, whereas the department felt that giving parents the right of 'exit' would strengthen their 'voice' vis-à-vis providers. Petr Varmuza, Department of Community and Neighbourhood Services, e-mail communication, 21 Mar. 2003
52. Action Day Care was founded in 1979, with a grant from Canada Works. As Kyle notes, 'Although Action Day Care worked initially on local Metro Toronto issues and provincial issues, it eventually had members from and links to a number of day-care groups across the country.' 'Historical Overview,' 376
53. Susan Colley, of Action Daycare, to Frank Drea, provincial minister of community services, 24 Aug. 1981, CRRU ID #3394, Action Day Care Historical Materials (1979-1981)
54. See Laurel Rothman and Jamie Kass, 'Still Struggling for Better Childcare: The Role of Labour in the Canadian Childcare Movement' (paper presented at Eighth Conference on Canadian Social Welfare Policy, University of Regina, 1997). I also interviewed Barbara Cameron, one of the key people involved in organizing the OFL conference on child care, 12 Dec. 1997
55. Action Daycare: Proposals for Action notes that its representatives involved in the committee tried to garner support for the direct grant campaigns but ran into resistance from not only commercial operators but also some of the non-profits that wanted to avoid division
56. 'Committee Backs Aid for Daycare,' Globe and Mail
57. 'Daycare Aid Closer for Middle Incomes,' Toronto Star, 22 Apr. 1983
58. Daycare Centres in Crisis, Toronto commissioner of planning and development, to the Neighbourhoods Committee, 28 June 1983, file January-September 1983, DMT. Italics added
59. Sub-Committee on Daycare, Role of the City in Daycare (17 Nov. 1983), Neighbourhoods Committee Report 24 (12 Dec. 83), Appendix A, file November-December 1983, DMT. The committee included several reform aldermen, notably Joanne Campbell, Jack Layton, and Ron Kanter
60. One development that may have helped sway them was Metro's decision to adopt the 'informed parental choice' principle, which meant subsidies would henceforth follow the child. Rowlands agreed with child-care supporter Alderman Joanne Campbell that this step would only further destabilize a system already in crisis ('Subsidy Daycare Facelift,' Toronto Sun, 26 Oct. 1983)
61. 'Subsidy Program for Day-care Workers Hailed as Success,' Globe and Mail, 1 Nov. 1986
62. In 1983, the usual provincial refusal to approve Metro's request was exacerbated by its intention to dedicate the whole of the increase (300 places) to those participating in the Employment Support Initiatives project, which was focused on getting social assistance recipients off the dole and into the labour market. This could be seen as an early rehearsal of the battles that would develop in the 1990s over the NDP government's Jobs Ontario program and the Harris government's Ontario Works program
63. It also recommended concentration on the age group of traditional concern - pre-schoolers - which was a shift from the Metro Task Force on Daycare's recommendation for an equitable balance among infants, toddlers, and school-aged children
64. Commissioner of community services, Daycare Service Priorities, submitted to the Community Services and Housing Committee, 9 Sept. 1983, Appendix III, file September 1983, DMT
65. Daycare Coalition of Metropolitan Toronto to Fergy Brown, chairman of the Metropolitan Toronto Community Services and Housing Committee, 21 Sept. 1983, 4, file September-November 1983, DMT
66. The argument here is part of a broader argument about the formation of national welfare regimes that is developed in Rianne Mahon, 'Yet Another R? The Redesign and Rescaling of Welfare Regimes' (paper presented at the 2003 meeting of Research Committee 19 of the International Sociology Association, Toronto). The argument argument that 'nationalization,' as a component of establishing social citizenship, did not sub-national scales perhaps applies more to social services than to transfers
67. Miller, 'Political Empowerment,' 405
68. Neil Bradford, 'Why Cities Matter: Policy Research Perspectives for Canada,' Canadian Policy Research Network (CPRN) Discussion paper F 23, 2002
69. and Jane Jenson and Rianne Mahon, 'Bringing Cities to the Table: Childcare and Intergovernmental Affairs,' CPRN Discussion paper F 26, 2002
70. Recall that Alberta's municipalities originally had quite a role to play, but the province centralized the system of preschool child care in the 1980s
71. Katie Cooke, Report of the Task Force on Childcare (Ottawa: Status of Women Canada, 1986), 187
72. Apparently, this route also made it possible to include families higher up in the middle-income range. Petr Vermuza, Community and Neighbourhood Services, Toronto, e-mail communication, 21 Mar. 2003
73. Key battles brought politicians like Godfrey, Eggleton, and Chong, the Social Services Committee, and the department together with grassroots activists around the common cause of protesting provincial limits
74. Report 14 of the Social Services and Housing Committee, Municipality of Metro Toronto, for consideration by the Council of the Metro Toronto, 23 Sept. 1980, file January-September 1980, DMT
75. 'Day-care Battle Metro's Biggest since Spadina,' Toronto Star, 19 Aug. 1980
76. Council granted half the amount needed to maintain spaces, on two conditions: that the minimum fee charged for subsidized places be raised, and Metro centres be included in the study of efficiency in Metro services. 'Metro Melts Daycare Freeze,' Toronto Star, 26 Sept. 1980
77. 'Norton Boycotts Rally against Day-care Cuts,' Globe and Mail, 24 Oct. 1980
78. It is now called the Canadian Childcare Advocacy Association. See Kyle, 'Historical Overview,' 380
79. Martha Friendly, Childcare Policy in Canada: Putting the Pieces Together (Don Mills, ON: Addison-Wesley, 1994)
80. Rianne Mahon, '"Both Wage-Earner and Mother": Women's Organizing and Childcare Policy in Sweden and Canada,' in Women's Organizing and Public Policy in Canada and Sweden, eds. L. Briskin and M. Eliasson (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999)
81. Mahon, '"Both Wage-Earner and Mother,"' 255-60
82. Rosalie Abella, Report of the Commission on Equality in Employment (Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1984)
83. Headed by seasoned femocrat Katherine Cooke, the task force proposed the kind of citizen service model demanded by the CDCAA and its allies across the county
84. Robert Welch, 'Childcare in Ontario: Understanding the Present, Directions for the Future' (presentation on child care to the third annual Federal, Provincial, Territorial Meeting of Ministers responsible for the status of women, Niagara on the Lake, 1984), 9-10. Toronto Reference Library
85. Some, like Alberta, had fully embraced commercial provision; a few preferred non-profit forms, while others, like Ontario, allowed for mixed provision
86. Welch, 'Childcare in Ontario,' 54
87. The special committee on child care, headed by Tory MP Shirley Martin, received input from groups across the country, with the majority calling for universal child care, provided under non-profit auspices, and direct funding of services. The Tories' majority report, however, called for increases in child-care tax measures and the extension of operating grants to commercial child-care centres. See Friendly, Childcare Policy in Canada
88. Mayor Art Eggleton and Alderman Paul Christie, 'A Crisis in Childcare,' to City Council, 26 Aug. 1988, 1, file June-August 1988, DMT. The memo was based on a longer document that Christie, as chair of the City of Toronto Daycare Grant Committee, had submitted to the City Executive in August
89. At this time, Metro accounted for close to half the subsidized spots in the province
90. 'Province Considers Means for Subsidized Daycare,' Toronto Star, 23 Sept. 1988
91. 'Subsidy System Called Unfair,' Toronto Star, 30 Nov. 1988
92. 'Eggleton Wants Aid to Expand Day Care,' Toronto Star, 6 Nov. 1988
93. 'Metro Votes to Pay Extra $3.6 Million for Day Care,' Toronto Star, 19 Apr. 1989
94. Metropolitan Toronto, Comprehensive Review, 5
95. V. Tyyska, 'Advocacy Ignored: Childcare Policy In Ontario in the 1990s,' in Prentice, Changing Childcare, 137-8
96. Over 1000 turned up at a rally that was expected to draw only 250. 'Day-care Children Speak Out on Cuts,' Toronto Star, 8 Nov. 1995
97. 'Toronto, Ottawa Discuss Saving Day-Care Centres,' Toronto Star, 26 Sept. 1995
98. 'Day-care Subsidies Expected to Suffer,' Globe and Mail, 1 Dec. 1995
99. 'Ottawa Close to Deal on Metro Child Care,' Globe and Mail, 5 Jan. 1996. The Ecker review, Improving Ontario's Childcare System, was released in 1996
100. 'Reprieve for School-aged Day Care Expected,' Globe and Mail, 30 Jan. 1996
101. In addition to those responsible for Metro's subsidy program, these included the City of Toronto's workplace day-care coordinator and those involved in supporting the Toronto Board of Education's 'cooperative use' program
102. Prentice, 'Militant Mothers in Domestic Times,' 101
103. Magnusson, 'Toronto,' 126
104. Langford, 'From Social Movement to Isolated Interest Group.'
105. McDonnell, 'Day Care for Better or for Worse,'
106. and Griffin, 'Addendum.'
107. See Jane Jenson, 'Against the Current: Childcare and Family Policy in Quebec,' in Childcare Policy at the Crossroad: Gender and Welfare State Restructuring, eds. S. Michel and R. Mahon (London: Routledge, 2002)