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...access fewer services than more affluent and suburban areas. Overall, the distribution of spaces and services reveals systemic dysfunctions in the current childcare architecture. This failure is multi-scalar: while experienced at the local level, the originating causes are with higher orders of government. Urban justice is denied by childcare policy and delivery that reproduces and compounds neighbourhood dis/advantage. The conclusion problematizes both voluntary sector reliance and local political inaction, each of which carries implications for planners.

Key words: Childcare, social services, planning, urban justice, local government

Resume

Ce texte explore la relation ville--services de garde a l'enfance. Il etudie les places en service de garde licencie a Winnipeg et fait le constar de l'iniquite de la repartition des places en garderie entre les differents quartiers. Les quartiers plus pauvres et ceux regroupant plus d'aborigenes som particulierement desavantages, car on y retrouve moins d'accessibilite et moins de services que dans les quartiers plus nantis ainsi que dans les banlieues. Dans l'ensemble, la repartition des places et des services traduit des dysfonctions systemiques de la structure actuelle des services de garde a l'enfance. Cet echec est multi-scalaire; bien qu'il soit ressenti localement, ses causes prennent leur source au sein des niveaux superieurs de gouvernement. C'est un deni de justice urbaine induit par la politique des services de garde a l'enfance et sa mise en oeuvre, qui reproduit et combine les des/avantages entre quartiers. La conclusion fait ressortir la double problematique de la dependance a l'egard du benevolat et de l'inaction politique locale, chacune comportant des implications significatives pour les urbanistes.

Mots cles: Services de garde a l'enfance, services sociaux, urbanisme, justice urbaine, pouvoir local

Introduction

Childcare has an urban, as well as a justice, dimension. The justice case can be readily seen in the social democracies of Western Europe which deliver universal high quality childcare services as a matter of public entitlement, children's rights, gender equity and work-family reconciliation. In North America, by contrast, no such justice is found in the small number of expensive childcare spaces available on the private user-pay market. The case for childcare's urban dimension is found in urban under-development: in all Canadian provinces save Ontario, there is no municipal role in childcare. Close to one-half of Canada's urban dwellers are in two-parent or lone-parent families, yet in Canada's cities, regulated childcare services exist for only 10-16 percent of children aged 12 and under (Mahon & Jenson, 2006, p. 4).

Despite under-development, the city-childcare connection is being recognized. In 2000, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities declared its support for universal childcare (Federation of Canadian Municipalities, 2000). "Childcare is a must for a modern city" argue the authors of the Toronto Commission on Early Learning and Childcare (Coffey & McCain, 2002). Vancouver's Mayor Philip Owen proclaimed that "access to licensed, quality, safe and affordable childcare is one of the greatest contributors to the quality of life" (Garr, 2004). The Mayor of Toronto recently despaired that "choice in child care does not exist for most Canadian families who want access to early learning in a regulated program" (Miller, 2006).

In Canada (as in most liberal welfare states), childcare is mainly provided by the private sector. Save in Ontario, cities do not plan, manage or operate childcare, nor do other levels of government. Instead, about four out of every five regulated childcare spaces in Canada is provided by the third sector--the not-for-profit domain of voluntary and community organizations, with a very small role for directly-government operated childcare services only in two provinces (Friendly & Beach, 2005, p. 206). The remaining 20 percent of Canada's childcare spaces are provided on a commercial basis by privately-owned businesses. Thus, Canada's childcare system is premised on voluntary sector delivery.

Third sector delivery, however, is complex. While it is a bulwark against generally lower-quality commercial services, third sector reliance also more troublingly presumes facilities will materialize where and when they are needed, arising 'from the ground up.' Notwithstanding its many strengths, decentralized production "militates against attempts to foster equity" (Skelton, 1996, p. 62) because needs are typically not matched by capacities to produce services. Third sector service production tends to map onto and reproduce social gradients. Areas where social capital and socio-economic status are high are likely to have stronger capacity to organize services than disadvantaged areas. One way to demonstrate this relationship with respect to childcare is to examine neighbourhood rates of access, such as the number of regulated spaces per 100 children. As Canadian geographer Marie Truelove has observed, such service-to-access rates produce a crude, though telling, index of territorial social justice (Truelove, 1992).

The deleterious outcomes of inequitable distribution at provincial and national scales are widely-recognized. The distribution of services was decried by international experts of an OECD review team, who observed a "patchwork of uneconomic, fragmented services" which they described as a system of "mediocrity and weak access" (OECD, 2004, p. 6 and p. 57). Yet few Canadian studies have examined territorial distribution of childcare service at the local scale (see, for examples, Hertzman, 2004; Mahon & Jenson, 2006; Truelove, 1992; 1996). Curiously, local distribution of childcare is generally overlooked in policy analysis and discussions.

In this paper, I closely interrogate the distribution of licensed and regulated full and part-day childcare spaces provided by centres and family childcare homes in Winnipeg. The study reveals better access in...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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