Madelyn Bardell doesn’t think working parents should be expected to provide childcare during their work hours. She compares the idea to expecting the same parents to build the road they travel on their daily commute. In an editorial-style paper entitled The Mirage of $10-a-Day Childcare: Affordability Without Access, Bardell outlines how the expansion of Quebec’s $10 per-day childcare plan into a federally-mandated universal childcare program remains, for many families, an illusion.
The third-year Victoria College student is pursuing both a Major in Economics and a Major in Ethics, Society and Law. It’s a pairing of programs that will give the Belleville native, who is considering law school as a next step, a healthy background in policy creation, as well as the research methodologies for testing and evidencing the efficacy of social programs that result from policy decisions. She has already started applying the critical lenses she is learning about to the world around her.
“I have a young niece and a niece and nephew, so I was just interested in the space,” Bardell explained. “I’d been seeing the $10‑a‑day headlines in the papers, but then I was hearing more anecdotally about problems with long waitlists. And when I started to look into that, there was just a lot of research available, so it seemed like a good space to get to know more about!”
According to the federal mandate, provinces have until April 2026 to implement the program. Bardell has come across all the barriers to successful implementation in her research for the article, which won a Department of Economics Essay Prize in Economic Policy.
“I wrote about how cheaper daycare is great, and how that’s especially great for women, but we also have to watch the waitlists,” Bardell said. “If it’s not accessible, if people can’t find a spot, then that’s not helpful. The federal program is trying to recreate the Quebec program, which is world‑renowned, but there’s concern over the lack of daycare spots and the lack of early childhood educators available to ensure quality chid care.”
The universal daycare program, Bardell argued in her paper, must be built like any other form of public infrastructure.
“Far from being a drain on public finances, universal childcare is among the most profitable investments a government can make,” she wrote. “Nobel laureate James Heckman’s research shows that each dollar spent on early learning yields returns of 7 to 13 percent per year; better than most stock portfolios. The payoff comes in the form of higher educational attainment, stronger labour force participation, and lower reliance on social programs. In other words, early childcare is not just social policy, it is economic policy at its most efficient.”
Bardell believes there will be future opportunities for her to explore the universal childcare program and the policies that demanded its development. Like her dual majors, the opportunities span disciplines and audiences for her work.
“I’m actually in a class right now where I might do something with the same topic,” she said. “It’s not an economics class, it’s for Ethics, Society, and Law, but it’s called Economic Inequality in Canada. It’s not for the economics audience, but the work I did here is helpful and I will be carrying it over to my other work.”
Return to the Department of Economics website.
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