Governments are not taking responsibility for solving the child care crisis. They seem to be hoping that profit-making private enterprise will fill the gap. Studies clearly show that profit-making child care is always less adequate in terms of the staff/child ratio, nutritious food, and space and toys available. It doesn't seem to occur to our policy makers that their analysis and their policy prescriptions are having an adverse impact on our children. Besides regular full-time and part-time licensed child care spaces, government support is also needed to help establish emergency and respite care. Flexible care is required for illness, for emergency breakdowns of alternate child care, for exam time for students, and for women who are required by unemployment insurance to be hunting for a job.

INCOME TAX DEDUCTION

One of the authors of this brief was surprised to discover that she was allowed two thousand dollars for child care expenses. Two thousand dollars after paying thirty-four hundred for a daytime sitter and another six hundred for evening sitters! In addition, only the person in a couple who makes the lowest income is allowed to make the income tax deduction. So even if the woman is paying for child care in order to be freed to work and go to school, her husband may claim the child care expenditures if he is making less money.

CHILD CARE COSTS IN
TRAINING ALLOWANCES

We commend Canada Employment and Immigration for recognizing the substantial costs of child care and for making available a realistic amount for child care as part of the training allowance for women with children. Yet even with these substantial increases, now at $16.00 per day per child, there are women in Canadian Jobs Strategy Re-entry programs who are unable to cover their full costs of child care. These women have to make up the difference from the regular portion of their training allowance, with the result that survival and subsistence needs are not taken care of: they come to class malnourished, and the quality of their learning and performance is diminished.

EMPLOYER SPONSORED
ON THE JOB

The 1984 Statistics Canada Adult Education Survey has clearly indicated that men have greater access to and participation in employer-funded training than do women (See graph). Whereas 27% of men taking courses in Nova Scotia were paid for by their employer, only 11% of women, students were so funded.

Such discrimination hurts women doubly because not only do women have to pay for this training with their own money and time, but if these women have children, they have to pay, yet again, while they are on a training course. If the training were funded by the employer, especially during work hours, women, with their already lower salaries, would be spared this "double whammy".

RECOMMENDATIONS

• That the 1,910 publicly subsidized spaces for child care in the province of Nova Scotia, nearly half of which are located within the City of Halifax, be expanded to meet the actual need for child care across the province.
• That a comprehensive and universal child care system be implemented without any further delay.
• That twenty-four hour care which is regulated and supervised by provincial authorities be implemented, and, that such care be available on weekends as well as overnight.