Last week, the Fraser Institute released its paper, Is the Federal Daycare Program Achieving Its Stated Goals? written by Phillip Cross, previously of Statistics Canada. The paper denounces the $10/day early learning and child care plan and concludes that the federal government initiative has been a failure.

Dr. Gordon Cleveland launches a robust critique of this paper declaring that “Phillip Cross is wrong on all counts, contributing yet more false information to child care discussions in Canada”. Dr. Cleveland goes through Cross’ arguments pointing out, first, that he fails to mention the most successful aspect of the program – the reduction of fees down to $10/day in many provinces/territories and by 50% in the others. He also illustrates how and why the very statistics that Phillip Cross uses are inaccurate and is able to use the same datasets to reach different and more positive conclusions.