What we ask of parents

This is unfortunate as even the most casual glance at the two sets of policies suggests that the way Canadian governments subsidize these two types of non-compulsory education are totally different, and it is not immediately obvious why this is the case. [...] In our conclusion (Section 4), we do not make any call for action, or express a preference for one level of subsidy over another; instead, 1. For the purposes of this report child care and ECE are interchangeable terms, with the former predominating as it is the principal term in use for the relevant government programs. [...] We assume that the parents claim deductions for the cost of child care, and that the child attending PSE is over 18 and that s/he transfers the maximum transferrable portion of her/his tuition, textbook, and education amount tax credits to her/his parents. [...] The remaining provinces instead set maximum subsidy amounts that are lower than median child-care fees.9 Though child-care subsidies are based on parental income, the subsidy never passes through parents’ hands; instead, it is passed directly from the province (or in Ontario, the municipality) to the child-care provider in order to make up the difference between the cost charged to the subsidized [...] In most provinces, the formula is as follows: for the first $7,000 of discretionary income, the expected contribution rate is 15%; for the next $7,000 it is 20%, and above that it is plus 40% of their discretionary income above 14,000 (see Table 4 below).