What the U.S. Can Learn from Canada’s ‘$10-a-Day’ Child Care Policy

Posted by Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity on November 7, 2023

In this Spotlight Exclusive, we speak with child and family policy expert Elliot Haspel about what America can learn from Canada’s child care system. Over the past 20 years, Canada has been working toward a nationally supported, locally run, $10-a-day system. Over five years, the government is investing $30 billion Canadian, and significant impacts have already emerged, including fee cuts of up to 50 percent and child care bills decreasing to $2,400 or less annually for lower income families. In terms of advocacy, Haspel notes the success of simple messages, including emphasizing that “the government is doing something positive for children and families and which begins to push back against socio-cultural barriers to the idea that it’s proper for government to support parents in this way.” He argues that although no major federal legislation in the U.S. seems imminent, “the conditions are increasingly in place for some sort of grand compromise. And what I mean by that is child care is a pain point in red states and blue states, in rural areas and urban areas.”

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