What Mayor Mamdani Should Learn from Child Care in Canada

When Rachel Cohen Booth recently wrote in the New York Times that Zohran Mamdani, New York City's new mayor, can successfully provide universal free child care for children aged six weeks to five years, the entire article hinged on one little word: if. 

“If,” Booth noted, “[Mamdani] learns from the mistakes that have derailed past efforts, he could pull off something remarkable.” She doesn’t want him to repeat the failures of places like Canada’s province of Quebec, which instituted a universal, $5/day system in 1997. To that, she could have added the failures of Canada’s new federal child care plan. 

In order to learn from our mistakes, we have to agree on what those mistakes are and why they happened. Unfortunately, throughout the article, Booth misdiagnoses the reasons for child care system failures, significantly in Quebec and Canada. 

Cardus, the think tank where I work, has been chronicling the problems of the new Canada-wide child care system launched with a CAD $30 billion funding commitment in 2021. And starting too fast is not the reason for shortcomings in Quebec and Canada, as Booth argues. 

Lesson 1: Child Care Is Not Primarily Economic Policy

The first reason for failure is that politicians tend to think of child care primarily as economic policy. Both Quebec and Canada have approached child care this way, and Mamdani makes it clear in this video that this is also his view. When child care is seen as economic policy—something to keep parents of the very youngest children paying taxes and contributing to GDP— then the quality of child care often lands as a distant second, third, or even non-existent concern. Quebec’s program has been shown in several studies to have negative effects on children’s behavior. Another large scale study showed the quality of care in Quebec to be poor. Nonetheless, it did coax up women’s labor force participation and so Quebec continues to be heralded as a great success. Indeed, the new Canada-wide system is modelled after Quebec in the ultimate story of a public program failing upwards and expanding in spite of significant flaws. 

When child care is seen as economic policy—to keep parents of the youngest children paying taxes and contributing to GDP—then concern for quality often lands as a distant second.

Ironically, while most every politician views child care as good economics (“the lack of universal child care has cost our city’s economy more than $20 billion dollars in the last few years alone,” Mamdani tells us), they simultaneously fail to grasp the one rock solid economic principle that free and/or highly subsidized child care has never managed to buck. Offering any service at a cheaper-than-market (and below-cost) price inflates demand for it. This means increased difficulty finding care, which is precisely what happened in Canada. 

Lesson 2: Fewer Choices

Worse yet, free universal child care also decreases other choices. What business, after all, can compete with “free”? Private child care centers close as a result. In New York City, expect a growing divide between high and low-income New Yorkers. Data show lower-income Canadians are more than likely to be shut out of our new subsidized system, as a recent Auditor General assessment of the Canadian system pointed out.  

Lesson 3: Child Care Becomes Politicized 

Another reason for failure is that child care does indeed become a political football, as Booth acknowledges it did in Washington D.C. Child care is incredibly complex, and the nature of the work means few economies of scale can ever be realized. When politicians try, you end up with Quebec’s legal adult-to-child ratios of 5 infants for 1 adult—the worst in Canada—as an effort to offer more spaces at (slightly) lower cost. Once expansive programs are put in place, funding in difficult economic times is unable to keep up. 

If there is any one lesson for American politicians from Canada and Quebec, it’s that a child care system will be most effective and equitable when it truly prioritizes parents.

In Canada, you could get whiplash from just how quickly activists turned on the very government who brought in the brand new child care plan because they “failed” to prioritize it enough in a subsequent budget. For example, “Why is Prime Minister Mark Carney’s budget pressing the pause button on early learning and child care?” asks one such activist-economist. Having made child care political, some find it absolutely shocking that it is therefore subject to politics. Given the high costs of universal child care, regardless of how New York City votes, it will always need additional state funding. New York state has more voters who believe the idea is impossible, meaning they might not vote to fund it. Let the political football begin.    

Lesson 4: Hostility Toward Private Child Care

Another issue is that while many are committed to the provision of child care by private business, child care activists are not. New York’s governor Kathy Hochul (D) has spoken to this commitment. But in the world of free or highly subsidized universal child care system activism, which includes the very stakeholders who elected Mamdani, private child care is a terrible no-no. They frame it as being lower quality, though the evidence is debatable. What they desire is a public, not-for-profit system, with day cares situated in schools, where it can soon be staffed by a unionized workforce that will then go on to advocate for more spaces in unionized centers, not in private businesses or homes. In Canada, hostility to private child care is embedded in the system and has decreased access. This is, in part, why only a minority of Canadian kids (roughly 30 percent) have access to the subsidized child care.  

Lesson 5: A Narrow Definition

Perhaps the biggest reason why Canada and Quebec’s child care systems are failing is from an ideological aversion to private care in a different way—by defining child care very narrowly as licensed care provided by professionals. If, instead, child care is defined as the care of a child no matter who does it, including family, then the most effective and equitable system will fund the parents to use dollars as they see fit, including private care in families, unlicensed or licensed care in homes, and other forms of private care. 

The good news is Mamdani says he wants to fund families who prefer child care in their homes. But can he withstand political pressure? It is possible to have a system that funds families and allows them to use their dollars for the care of their choice, including staying home. But if too many parents choose this, it nullifies the purported economic benefits of getting more parents into the waged workforce. When conflict crystallizes, parents don’t hire lobbyists; unions and activists do.

While there are many problems with the Quebec and Canadian child care systems, clearly, speed in execution was not one of the main ones. Even if it were, politicians’ terms come to an end and thus they have a low tolerance for a slow rollout with little to show to voters. 

Prioritize Parents

If there is any one lesson for American politicians from Canada’s universal child care system, it’s that a child care system will be most effective and equitable when it truly prioritizes parents. The major mistake of Quebec and Canada’s systems is that both fail to recognize that all parents are using care of some kind. When a government system funds only one kind of care that most parents do not prefer or cannot access, all parents end up paying for child care for the few. If Mayor Mamdani can learn this one lesson, he may become the author of America’s first successful child care system, after all. 

Andrea Mrozek is Senior Fellow at Cardus, a non-partisan think tank.