Poor Childcare Affects Big Business

Introduction

The government policies surrounding daycare are quite complex and are always a political hot topic, as not everyone places the same amount of importance on the topic at the same time. Many people who do not have children see childcare subsidies as a waste of taxpayers monies and feel that the burden, of childcare, should lie with the individual parent and not society. But to the thousands of low income working households having a job would not be possible without daycare subsidies and therefore, feel very strongly that there is not enough subsidy monies going towards childcare. This strong difference of opinions will always exist due to the fact that people have children at different times in their lives and at different income levels. There is a tendency to only be concerned with the right now but, at some point in nearly every Canadians life, child care will become an important issue. Gone are the traditional roles of women staying at home to care for their children; partly due to women wanting careers and the opportunity to seek higher education and partly because that dual income is necessary for the survival of many household.

Thesis

Canada’s Government Policies towards childcare negatively affect business bottom line through low productivity, increased sick days and labour shortages.

Background

The federal government made some early attempts at introducing childcare benefits to the general public back during World War ll. In a 1998 broadcast from a CBC’s program called The National Magazine, reporter Jennifer Scott, highlights those attempts to subsidised childcare in Canada noting that putting women in the workforce became an essential solution to keeping the economy going and the “government quickly established a national system of "day nurseries" to care for the kids”(Scott,1998). It was called The Dominion-Provincial Wartime Agreement, it was in effect from 1942 to 1946, during which time the federal and provincial governments...