EXCERPTS
The children of Toronto had nothing to do with this city's budget woes but they could end up paying a steep price.
Economists have analyzed recommendations to gut Toronto's licensed child-care system and have flagged potential blowback that KPMG's accountants never considered, but Toronto's council and citizens should.
Here is the economists' case for leaving children's services out of the mayor's cost-cutting crusade.
There are more than 900 licensed child-care centres and another 900 homes providing child care in Toronto. More than 55,000 children - 22 per cent of all children living in this city - receive educational care in these programs.
An explosion of biological research attests to how good early education and care prepare children for success in school and can alter life chances, particularly for children living in disadvantaged circumstances.
But child care does more than prepare the next generation for work, family and citizenship. More than 60,000 parents in this city, one-third of them single parents, are able to go to work because their children have publicly supported child care.
Their paycheques provide for their families, grow our economy, and contribute to the tax base required to have clean water, roads, sidewalks, buses, garbage pickup, sewage systems and many other public services that make Toronto livable.
In Toronto, the shadow of Bay Street looms large. But here's a little-known fact: the child-care sector is actually a bigger employer than the city's banking sector. Imagine wiping out the banking sector in the name of cost-cutting. It would be a political non-starter. It's time to look at child care through that very same lens.
Those 60,000 parents may not be the millionaires of Bay Street but their earnings add an estimated $4 billion to the economy every year, a welcome shot in the arm, especially post-recession.
The economic benefits of publicly supported child care don't stop there.
Child care directly employs 10,000 people, with annual earnings of $450 million. Every child-care job has a spinoff effect, creating 2.15 more jobs through the services and supplies child-care centres purchase.
Economists tell us every dollar spent on child care has a multiplier effect on Toronto's economy of $1.38. Every dollar invested increases Canada's economic output - the GDP - by $2.30. This is one of the highest GDP multipliers of any sector.
Every public dollar we put into child care also returns 90 cents in income and consumption taxes, which help pay for roads, transit and many other public services that help distinguish Toronto from its more neglected counterparts, such as Detroit.
Nobel laureate James Heckman and a spate of economists agree: public investments in quality child care perform better than the most bullish markets. It's hard to find more value for the money than what is delivered by child care.
While spending has its benefits, cutting public investment comes at a price.
If city council decides to eliminate 2,000 subsidized spaces, it should also know it's agreeing to eliminate the jobs of 400 Torontonians working in the sector. Another 830 spinoff jobs will disappear and the employment of 3,000 parents will be disrupted.
In dollar terms, that's an estimated $235 million pulled out of the local economy.
It's about the money, but it's not all about the money. City council has a responsibility to promote equity of opportunity for all Toronto citizens.
City-operated child-care programs serve some of our most vulnerable families. They tend to be located in neighbourhoods ignored by private programs. City centres change the lives of children who have special challenges - children private centres often won't take because they are just too "difficult."
Private operators may take over the facilities council off-loads as a way to get costs "off book" but they will not be serving the same families. Where do these families go?
City council must also be a responsible manager of our resources. This is what Children's Services Division does. It manages and provides transparent accounting to the public for its tax dollars. It provides assurances to parents for the quality of care their children receive.
Anyone can go to the city's website to view a centre's record. Before these systems were instituted, there was stricter public oversight of hot dog street vendors than there were of the places where small children spent their formative years.
Is council really prepared to send us back to those dark days?
The challenge before city council is to make fair and responsible fiscal decisions. The economic facts make clear: Cost-cutting on the backs of children meets neither criterion.
-reprinted from the Toronto Star