RESOURCES

Briefs and Reports

Canadian Labour Congress annual report card reveals scant improvement in quality of life for working families
An annual report, undertaken by the Canadian Labour Congress finds only a negligible improvement in the quality of life of working families over the past year.
The Canadian Labour Congress’ Report Card 2004 notes that the percentage of the overall workforce that is unionized kept pace with the continuing changes in the economy. However, while the labour movement is holding its own, it paints a sobering picture of the situation faced by all too many working families who lack the benefits of unionization:

  1. More than one in ten full-time workers earns a poverty-level wage.
  2. One in five Canadians is afraid of losing his or her job.
  3. One in four Canadians between the ages of 25 and 64 has to settle for either temporary work, or part-time jobs or self-employment.
  4. 14% of Canadians under the age of 25 are unemployed.
  5. Barely one in three workers is now eligible for employment insurance. A decade ago, before the so-called ‘E.I. reform’, three quarters of workers were covered.
  6. While the wage gap between women and men narrowed slightly, other indicators of equality, such as the gap between rich and poor and younger and older workers, remained static.

Income for Living?
The National Council of Welfare’s latest report looks at the incomes of people on welfare and the incomes of people with jobs. The study compares gross incomes and take-home incomes of full-time workers with minimum-wage jobs, jobs that paid ten dollars an hour and jobs with average wages. Income for Living? looks at the impact of federal and provincial tax and benefit programs on these low-income and average-income people in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver.

Delayed Life Transition: Trends and Implications
Vanier Institute of the Family
Roderic Beaujot, Professor of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario notes Canadians taking longer to finish school and start working full-time, but they're also leaving home later, and waiting longer to get married and to become parents.
"Stronger investments in young families-including subsidies for parental leaves, tax benefits, reduced work hours, and childcare-would enable people in this stage of life to achieve their work and family goals."

Births - 2002 / Naissances - 2002
Statistics Canada / Statistique Canada
Canada's crude birth rate (the number of live births for every 1,000 people in the population) fell to its all-time low in 2002 in the wake of another decline in the number of live births.
In total, 328,802 babies were born in 2002, down 1.5% from the previous year. It was the 11th decline in the past 12 years.
Sask. moms having bigger families, earlier
Jana Pruden, The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon); April 20, 2004

The Current State of Canadian Family Finances - Full Report / Press Release
Vanier Institute of the Family; February 17, 2004
A growing number of Canadian families and households are now "living on the edge. The "edge" has gotten closer over the five years that the Vanier Institute of the Family has been releasing this report on family finances. The pressure points are clear and are getting worse.

  • Hourly earnings are shrinking.
  • Massive "over-spending" continues.
  • A record number of family members, especially those with children are now employed (a record high 82 % of Canadian families with children have two income earners and 83% of single mothers are working).
    Canadian families are increasingly becoming "workaholics" in order to make ends meet.
  • Over the last few years, only the wealthiest twenty percent of families have seen their share of the total income pie increase.

Pre-budget Consultations
Hon. Ralph Goodale, Minister of Finance, is undertaking a series of cross-country pre-budget consultations (from January 12-23, 2004) with a "wide range of representatives from Canada’s social, business and academic communities" to discuss their priorities for this year’s budget.
Information available from the Department of Finance website (Jan 8) + update (Jan 12)

Briefs submitted by parents:
BC Parent Voices
Miami Children's Facility (Manitoba)
University of Guelph's Child Care and Learning Centre Parents Advisory Committee
Parents for Quality Care (New Brunswick)

In Our Way: Child Care Barriers to Full Workforce Participation Experienced
by Parents of Children with Special Needs - and Potential Remedies
Sharon Hope Irwin - Director, SpeciaLink
and Donna S. Lero - University of Guelph, Centre for Families, Work and Well-Being
All parents in the paid workforce face challenges balancing their work and family responsibilities. But for parents of children with special needs, the juggling act also involves economic penalties in the form of extra expenses and foregone employment income, as well as added stress because of inadequate child care, workplace and social supports.

Taking Responsibility for Child Care (PDF)
Advisory Council on the Status of Women; Fall 2003

Neighbourhoods Matter for Child Development
by Clyde Hertzman and Dafna Kohen
Transition Magazine, Vanier Institute of the Family; Autumn 2003
“Thanks to longitudinal studies such as Canada’s National Longitudinal Study of Children and Youth (NLSCY), we know that inequalities in child development emerge in a systematic fashion over the first five years of life, following contours established by family income; parental education; parenting style; neighbourhood safety, cohesion, and socio-economic mix; and access to good child care and family programs.... Economic security, affordable housing, and safety are important to the healthy development of Canada’s children, as are high-quality, well-coordinated, integrated services. Community resources such as housing, educational services, health care, child care, after-school programs, and cultural and leisure activities can act as vital supports for children, youth, and their families.”

Children and Families at Risk - Who's Responsible? (English)
Les enfants et les familles à risque - Qui en est responsable? (Français)
By Jane Jensen; Candian Policy Research Networks; Friday, October 3, 2003

The Cost of Eating in BC - Low-income families are more desperate than ever (PDF)
Dietitians of Canada; October 2003

Family Facts (English) / Données sur la famille (Français)
Vanier Institute of the Family

WHO GOES OUT TO WORK?

  • 94% of married men
  • 77% of married women
  • 85% of lone-parent fathers
  • 55% of lone-parent mothers with pre-schoolers
  • 75% of lone-parent mothers with school-aged children
  • 69% of wives with pre-schoolers
  • 79% of wives with school-aged children

WHO TAKES CARE OF CHILDREN WHEN THEIR PARENTS ARE AT WORK?

  • Non-parental care is provided to 40% of all children under 5 years:
  • 56% of children in non-parental care are cared for in someone else's home
  • 22% are cared for in their own home
  • 20% are cared for in a daycare centre

Unionization And Quality In Early Childhood Programs
Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)
The study's findings indicate that unionization not only has a positive impact on child care workers, but also on children in unionized centres, their parents and society. In other words, unionization of child care workers is good public policy. Specifically, the study found that:

  • Wages and benefits for teaching staff are substantially better in unionized centres.
  • Turnover rates for teachers are lower in unionized centres.
  • A significantly higher proportion of unionized centres act in ways that predict or are associated with higher levels of quality.
  • Unionized centres score higher on an overall program quality measurement than non-unionized centres.

Federal Pre-Budget Consultation Briefs - Submitted to the Standing Committee on Finance, September 2003

Never too early to invest in children: Early childhood education and care matters to business!
Charlie Coffey, Executive Vice President, Government & Community Affairs, RBC Financial Group, Toronto; Co-Chair, Commission on Early Learning and Child Care for the City of Toronto; September 2003
"It's never too early to invest in children - the bottom line is that early childhood education and care matters to business! ... Business also needs to support governments in developing national/regional early childhood education and care programs to replace the "patchwork" of projects and initiatives that are in place today."

A New Generation of Families Raising Young Children - A New Look at Data from National Surveys (PDF)
Human Resources Development Canada's Applied Research Branch and Healthy Child Manitoba; September 8, 2003
"The report shows that today's young children are born into many different types of families. Many children - as early as in the first five years of their lives - experience a significant change in their family circumstances as their parents separate, divorce or remarry. Research showed that sustained, quality child care provides important benefits to all children, especially those in low-income families. ...Despite changes in family life, parents continue to have the greatest impact on the outcomes of their children, through parenting and child-rearing decisions."

Part-Time Work and Family-Friendly Practices in Canadian Workplaces
Human Resources Development Canada, Derrick Comfort, Karen Johnson, and David Wallace; August, 2003
This report provides an overview of the availability of part-time work and family-friendly practices in Canadian workplaces. The findings suggest that many organizations still are not doing enough to help employees balance work and family obligations.
"Family responsibilities have been found to affect employees' willingness to accept greater job responsibilities and to seek promotions..."... "The provision of services, such as childcare and eldercare, can reduce stresses and everyday distractions by helping employees with caregiving responsibilities find and keep quality care arrangements."

Participation and Activity Limitation Survey: Children with disabilities
Statistics Canada; July 29, 2003
"Parents of 84,000 children, slightly over one-half (54%) of those with disabilities, reported that their child's condition had an impact on their family's employment situation. Examples of impact on employment include situations where family members had to work fewer hours or change their work hours to a different time of day or night in order to take care of the child."

OECD - Family Friendly Policies
Family-friendly policies are defined as those employment-oriented social policies that facilitate the reconciliation of work and family life by fostering adequacy of family resources and child development, favour the parental choice about work and care, and promote gender equality in employment opportunities.

Prince Edward Island Advisory Council on the Status of Women
Early Childhood Care and Education - Backgrounder (PDF)
It's time to Support Early Childhood Care and Education (PDF) - Media release June 25, 2003

Toronto First Duty: Blueprint for Early Learning and Child Care Services
May, 2003

Canadian Families and the Workplace
Work/Family/Life: Finding the Balance
National Children's Alliance; March, 2003
Canadian families today differ in many ways from previous generations. For workers today, the stress associated with trying to blend the responsibilities of paid work with the responsibilities of family and personal life has become and increasingly visible issue.

Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada 2001: Summary (PDF)
These Briefing Notes from the Childcare Resource and Research Unit summarize "Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada 2001" (February 2003). This fifth edition presents a pan-Canadian snapshot of child care and early childhood education. It adds cross-Canada provincial/territorial information about regulated child care, maternity and parental leave and relevant demographic information.
Childcare Resource and Research Unit; February, 2003

Voices of Canadians: Seeking Work Life Balance
L. Duxbury, C. Higgins, D. Coghill; January 2003
This report is not an academic study. It is a compilation of the comments of Canadian workers regarding how they feel about the stress they are facing in their daily lives as they seek to balance work and family.

International Trends Impacting Young Children (PDF)
UNESCO has just released "Policy Brief No. 8 on Early Childhood". This paper reflected on international trends that will have an impact on the demand for early childhood care and education.
UNESCO; December, 2002

Diversity or Disparity? Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada
This report, prepared by the ECEC Community Indicators project of Campaign 2000 and its partners in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, raises public awareness about early childhood education and care. The report illustrates that when the focus is on early childhood education, disparity, the less attractive cousin of diversity, is frequently uncovered.
ECEC Community Indicators Project Report; October, 2002

CCAAC Federal Pre-Budget Consultation (PDF)
CCAAC; September, 2002

Campaign 2000 Federal Pre-Budget Consultation
Campaign 2000; September, 2002

Young children and families need a system that supports them
Voices for Children - An Interview with Margaret McCain; June 2002

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