Résumés
Abstract
In 2018, responding to pressure from local governments and advocacy groups, British Columbia launched a provincial effort to build a universal $10/day child care system. As part of this effort, grants were issued to municipalities to support the development of municipal child care plans. In this paper, we conduct a plan evaluation analysis of 48 child care plans created by B.C. municipalities to characterize this emerging form of planning and understand initial strengths and areas for improvement. Our findings highlight common strategies for child care expansion, as well as areas for improvement in identifying and addressing current inequities. We conclude with lessons for other jurisdictions across Canada where local-level planning will be involved in facilitating child care expansion.
Keywords:
- plan evaluation,
- British Columbia,
- social planning,
- care,
- child care
Résumé
En 2018, en réponse à la pression des gouvernements locaux et des groups de pression, la Colombie-Britannique a lancé un effort provincial pour mettre en place un système universel de garde d’enfants à 10$ par jour. Dans le cadre de cet effort, des subventions ont été accordées aux municipalités pour soutenir l’élaboration de plans municipaux de garde d’enfants. Dans cet article, nous effectuons une analyse d’évaluation de 48 plans de garde d’enfants créés par des municipalités de la Colombie-Britannique pour caractériser cette forme émergente d’aménagement, comprendre les points forts initiaux et les domaines à améliorer. Nos résultats mettent en évidence des stratégies communes pour l’expansion des services de garde d’enfants, ainsi que des domaines à améliorer pour identifier et remédier des inégalités. Nous concluons en présentant des leçons pour d’autres juridictions à travers le Canada où l’aménagement au niveau local jouera un rôle dans la facilitation d’expansion des services de garde d’enfants.
Mots-clés :
- garde d'enfants,
- Colombie-Britannique,
- évaluation de plans,
- aménagement social,
- soin
Parties annexes
Bibliography
- B.C. Ministry of Education and Child Care. (2025). Design Guidelines for Child Care Centres (p. 98). https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/family-and-social-supports/child-care/info-partners-prov/childcarebc_design_guidelines.pdf
- Beach, J. (2022). More than spaces: Creating universal child care in Norway (Moving from Private to Public Processes: A Series on Creating Child Care in Canada). Childcare Resource and Research Unit. https://childcarecanada.org/sites/default/files/SERIES-Paper-8-More-than-spaces-universal-child-care-in-Norway.pdf
- Beebeejaun, Y. (2017). Gender, urban space, and the right to everyday life. Journal of Urban Affairs, 39(3), 323–334. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2016.1255526
- Berke, P., & Godschalk, D. (2009). Searching for the Good Plan: A Meta-Analysis of Plan Quality Studies. Journal of Planning Literature, 23(3), 227–240. https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412208327014
- Bhattacharya, T. (Ed.). (2017). Social reproduction theory: Remapping class, recentering oppression (First published). Pluto Press.
- Biglieri, S., Bochenek, J., Abdalla, S., Hartt, M., Lopez, K. J., Keil, R., & Weldrick, R. (2024). Networked everyday lives in the ‘care-full’ city: A framework for examining the complexities of immigrants living with dementia, carepartners, and care workers. Journal of Urban Affairs, 0(0), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2024.2372027
- Binet, A., Houston-Read, R., Gavin, V., Baty, C., Abreu, D., Genty, J., Tulloch, A., Reid, A., & Arcaya, M. (2023). The Urban Infrastructure of Care. Journal of the American Planning Association, 89(3), 282–294. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2022.2099955
- Blumenberg, E. (2004). En-gendering Effective Planning: Spatial Mismatch, Low-Income Women, and Transportation Policy. Journal of the American Planning Association, 70(3), 269–281. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944360408976378
- Caragata, L., Ellis, V., & Alemayehu, Z. (2023). A Whole Life: The Impact of $10-a-Day Child Care on the Health and Socioeconomic Well-being of Low-Income Lone Mothers in BC. Centre for Family Equity. https://assets.nationbuilder.com/singlemothersalliancebc/pages/1366/attachments/original/1702845604/2311-CFE-whole-life-report-digital.pdf
- Childcare Resource and Research Unit. (2022). A Summary of the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreements and Action Plans. https://childcarecanada.org/sites/default/files/Summary_CWELCC_CRRU_2022.pdf
- City of Burnaby. (2021). Burnaby Child Care Action Plan.
- City of Campbell River. (2020). Spaces for Children: Planning for Child Care Space Needs in Campbell River (p. 47). https://www.campbellriver.ca/docs/default-source/planning-building-development/campbell-river-child-care-report-2020.pdf?sfvrsn=1e16b08_0
- City of Coquitlam. (2021). Child Care Partnership Strategy (p. 62). https://www.coquitlam.ca/DocumentCenter/View/6158/Child-Care-Partnership-Strategy-PDF?bidId=
- City of Cranbrook. (2020). Child Care Action Plan 2020 (p. 46). https://docs.cranbrook.ca/downloads/corporate/Childcare-Action-Plan-2020.pdf
- City of Delta. (2020). City of Delta Childcare Strategy and Action Plan (p. 50). https://www.delta.ca/media/755
- City of North Vancouver. (2020). Child Care Action Plan 2021-2031 (p. 42). https://www.cnv.org/-/media/City-of-North-Vancouver/Documents/Initiatives-and-Policies/Child-Care-Action-Plan-2021-to-2031.pdf
- City of Powell River. (2020). Powell River Region-Wide Childcare Planning Project.
- City of Richmond. (2021). 2021-2031 Richmond Child Care Action Plan (p. 64). City of Richmond Community Social Development Department. https://www.richmond.ca/__shared/assets/child_care_action_plan58217.pdf
- City of Vancouver. (2022). Making Strides: Vancouver’s childcare strategy.
- Colen, S. (1995). ‘“Like a Mother to Them”’: Stratified Reproduction and West Indian Childcare Workers and Employers in New York. In F. Ginsburg & R. Rapp (Eds.), Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction (pp. 78–102). University of California Press.
- Cowichan Valley Regional District. (2020). Cowichan Region Child Care Plan (p. 311). https://cvrd.ca/DocumentCenter/View/97686/Cowichan-Region-Child-Care-Plan
- Curran, W. (2017). Gender and gentrification. Routledge.
- Dalla Costa, M., & James, S. (1975). The Power of women and the subversion of the community. Falling Wall Press Ltd.
- District of North Saanich. (2020). Child Care Inventory and Action Plan (p. 62). https://northsaanich.ca/wp-content/uploads/North-Saanich-Child-Care-Action-Plan.pdf
- District of Sooke. (2019). Child Care Needs Assessment + Action Plan (p. 161). https://sooke.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Sooke-Child-Care-Needs-Assessment-and-Action-Plan-2019.pdf
- District of Squamish. (2020). Squamish Child Care Action Plan (p. 40). https://squamish.ca/assets/Planning/Childcare/79c0190447/2.-Action-Plan-May-19-2020-FINAL-ENDORSED.pdf
- Folbre, N. (2021). The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems: An intersectional political economy. Verso Books.
- Fraser, N. (2014). Behind Marx’s Hidden Abode. New Left Review, 86, 55–72.
- Fraser, N. (2016). Contradictions of Capital and Care. New Left Review, 100, 99–117.
- Friendly, M., Beach, J., Mohamed, S., Rothman, L., Vickerson, R., & Young, C. A. (2020). Moving from Private to Public Processes to Create Child Care in Canada. Childcare Resource and Research Unit.
- Friendly, M., Cleveland, G., Colley, S., Vickerson, R., Ferns, C., & Holt, C. (2024). The Municipal Role in Child Care. Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance.
- Gerlach, A. J., Browne, A. J., & Greenwood, M. (2017). Engaging Indigenous families in a community-based Indigenous early childhood programme in British Columbia, Canada: A cultural safety perspective. Health & Social Care in the Community, 25(6), 1763–1773. https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12450
- Government of Canada. (2018). Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care Framework. https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/canada/employment-social-development/programs/indigenous-early-learning/1352-IELCC_Report-EN.pdf
- Guyadeen, D., Thistlethwaite, J., & Henstra, D. (2019). Evaluating the quality of municipal climate change plans in Canada. Climatic Change, 152(1), 121–143. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-018-2312-1
- Hahn, R. A., & Barnett, W. S. (2023). Early Childhood Education: Health, Equity, and Economics. Annual Review of Public Health, 44(Volume 44, 2023), 75–92. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-071321-032337
- Halseth, R., & Greenwood, M. (2019). Indigenous early childhood development in Canada: Current state of knowledge and future directions. National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health. https://www.nccih.ca/docs/health/RPT-ECD-PHAC-Greenwood-Halseth-EN.pdf
- Hare, J., & Anderson, J. (2010). Transitions to Early Childhood Education and Care for Indigenous Children and Families in Canada: Historical and Social Realities. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 35(2), 19–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/183693911003500204
- Hartt, M., DeVerteuil, G., & Potts, R. (2023). Age-Unfriendly by Design. Journal of the American Planning Association, 89(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2022.2035247
- Hayden, D. (1980). What Would a Non-Sexist City Be Like? Speculations on Housing, Urban Design, and Human Work. Signs, 5(3), S170–S187.
- Holt, C. (2018). Planning for child care: The impact of planning policies and strategies on the development of early learning and child care spaces in Winnipeg, Manitoba. [University of Manitoba]. http://hdl.handle.net/1993/33469
- Kwan, M.-P. (1999). Gender, the home-work link, and space-time patterns of nonemployment activities. Economic Geography, 75(4), 370–394. https://doi.org/10.2307/144477
- Laslett, B., & Brenner, J. (1989). Gender and Social Reproduction: Historical Perspectives. Annual Review of Sociology, 15(1), 381–404. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.15.080189.002121
- Lee, J., Vojnovic, I., & Grady, S. C. (2018). The ‘transportation disadvantaged’: Urban form, gender and automobile versus non-automobile travel in the Detroit region. Urban Studies, 55(11), 2470–2498. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098017730521
- Lyles, W., & Stevens, M. (2014). Plan Quality Evaluation 1994–2012: Growth and Contributions, Limitations, and New Directions. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 34(4), 433–450. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X14549752
- Lyles, W., & White, S. S. (2019). Who Cares? Journal of the American Planning Association, 85(3), 287–300. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2019.1612268
- Lyles, W., White, S. S., & Lavelle, B. D. (2018). The Prospect of Compassionate Planning. Journal of Planning Literature, 33(3), 247–266. https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412217735525
- Macdonald, D., & Friendly, M. (2023). Not Done Yet: $10-a-day child care requires addressing Canada’s child care deserts. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
- McCalman, J., Heyeres, M., Campbell, S., Bainbridge, R., Chamberlain, C., Strobel, N., & Ruben, A. (2017). Family-centred interventions by primary healthcare services for Indigenous early childhood well-being in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States: A systematic scoping review. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 17(1), 71. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-017-1247-2
- McElroy, J. (2023, October 18). How 9 people at a public hearing stopped a new child-care centre in Port Coquitlam, B.C. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/port-coquitlam-bc-child-care-centre-rejected-1.7000188
- Miraftab, F., & Huq, E. (2024). Urbanizing social reproduction: (Re)thinking the politics of care in capitalist urban development. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 42(2), 234–253. https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758241230179
- Morrow, O., & Parker, B. (2020). Care, commoning and collectivity: From grand domestic revolution to urban transformation. Urban Geography, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2020.1785258
- Nelischer, C., Loukaitou-Sideris, A., & Wendel, G. (2024). Caring public space: Advancing justice through intergenerational public space design and planning. Journal of Urban Affairs, 0(0), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2023.2291074
- Power, E. R., & Mee, K. J. (2020). Housing: An infrastructure of care. Housing Studies, 35(3), 484–505. https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2019.1612038
- Power, E. R., Wiesel, I., Mitchell, E., & Mee, K. J. (2022). Shadow care infrastructures: Sustaining life in post-welfare cities. Progress in Human Geography, 030913252211098. https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325221109837
- Prentice, S. (2007). Childcare, Justice and the City: A Case Study of Planning Failure in Winnipeg. Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 16(1), 92–108.
- Prentice, S., & White, L. A. (2019). Childcare deserts and distributional disadvantages: The legacies of split childcare policies and programmes in Canada. Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy, 35(1), 59–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/21699763.2018.1526700
- Resort Municipality of Whistler. (2020). Whistler Child Care Planning Project (p. 105). https://www.whistler.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Whistler-Child-Care-Planning-Project-Final-Report.pdf
- Ritzdorf, M. (1994). A Feminist Analysis of Gender and Residential Zoning in the United States. In I. Altman & A. Churchman (Eds.), Women and the Environment (pp. 255–279). Springer US. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1504-7_10
- Saegert, S. (1980). Masculine Cities and Feminine Suburbs: Polarized Ideas, Contradictory Realities. Signs, 5(3), S96–S111. https://doi.org/10.1086/495713
- Sandercock, L., & Forsyth, A. (1992). A Gender Agenda: New Directions for Planning Theory. Journal of the American Planning Association, 58(1), 49–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944369208975534
- Seasons, M. L. (2021). Evaluating urban and regional plans: From theory to practice. UBC Press.
- Shonkoff, J. P., & Phillips, D. A. (Eds.). (2000). Growing Up in Child Care. In From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development. National Academies Press (US). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK225555/
- Strobel, N. A., Chamberlain, C., Campbell, S. K., Shields, L., Bainbridge, R. G., Adams, C., Edmond, K. M., Marriott, R., & McCalman, J. (2022). Family-centred interventions for Indigenous early childhood well-being by primary healthcare services. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2022(12). https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD012463.pub2
- Surrey Community Child Care Task Force & City of Surrey. (2021). Surrey Community Child Care Action Plan (p. 46). https://www.surrey.ca/sites/default/files/media/documents/SurreyCommunityChildCareActionPlan.pdf
- Union of BC Municipalities. (2021). Stepping Stones: Child Care Planning Guides for BC’s Local Governments (p. 56). https://www.ubcm.ca/sites/default/files/2021-05/Child%20Care%20Planning%20Guides%20for%20BC%25E2%2580%2599s%20LG-highres.pdf
- Warner, M., Anderson, K., & Haddow, G. (2007). Putting Child Care in the Picture. Planning, 16–19.
- Warner, M., & Gradus, R. H. J. M. (2009). The Consequences of Implementing a Child Care Voucher: Evidence from Australia, the Netherlands and USA (SSRN Scholarly Paper 1469447). Social Science Research Network. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1469447
- Warner, M., & Prentice, S. (2013). Regional Economic Development and Child Care: Toward Social Rights. Journal of Urban Affairs, 35(2), 195–217. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9906.2012.00622.x