DR FRASER MUSTARD & COLLEAGUES
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
MEET THE TOP LOBBYISTS FOR REDUCING CHILDREN’S TIME WITH PARENTS
“By the end of the [1990s], the largely female child-care movement was bolstered by ‘the boys’ or ‘the suits’ — men such as scientist Fraser Mustard…. Royal Bank Vice-President Charles Coffey….the World Bank and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development”. Toronto Star April 25/05
DR MUSTARD, a blood specialist, not a child or brain expert by profession along with MARGARET McCAIN of the frozen food empire, wrote the Early Years Study reports. These reports explicitly promote the WORLD BANK’s agenda for child/family policy. Although not peer-reviewed, they are used as evidence for expansion of institutional child care. Mustard founded the Council for Early Child Development (CECD). He now works for the World Bank on child policy.
THE MCCAIN foundation funds Mustard’s CECD and the Childcare Research & Resource Unit (CRRU).
The CRRU headed by MARTHA FRIENDLY, long time top daycare lobbyist. She also works for the OECD on child/family policy, and co-wrote an OECD report on child care in Canada.
CHARLES COFFEY former Vice President of the RBC. He is on Mustard’s CECD Board, and its former Chair. He also works with the World Bank on child/family policy.
HELP – Human Early Learning Partnership – is headed by DR CLYDE HERTZMAN, epidemiologist not a child or brain expert by profession. He is a long-time World Bank staff/consultant, and current president of Mustard’s CECD. HELP is funded by the BC government to build “one of the world’s largest collections” of citizens’ private data, and to produce junk science ‘evidence’ to promote institutional child care.
ON MUSTARD’S CREDENTIALS AS A CHILD EXPERT
“When you achieve fame for something you were never trained in, it is amazing what your contacts are. I have been working for the World Bank and the bank for Latin America.” – Mustard to Senate 2007
ON PARENTS
“Only about one-third of the population are actually highly competent parents…17 per cent are
godawful.” Mustard Toronto Star Mar 26/07
“The old labour-intensive way of caring for children …is no longer viable.”
Value of “stimulus” to child development from different types of child care according to daycare economists
$0 = mother and “informal” care (father, grandparent, nanny, babysitter)
$3,600 = full-time daycare centre (as opposed to care by child’s mother)
$6,000 = full-time daycare centre (as opposed to “informal” care of father, grandparent, nanny, babysitter)
“the cost to society of [mothers’ looking after their children] – essentially the loss to the labour force”
Cleveland & Krashinsky The Benefits & Costs of Good Child Care pp. 67,76, 66, CRRU paper claiming $1 spent on daycare saves $2.
Parents are important to the child development “industry” for “the economic contributions they make to the economy, as employees and consumers.” – Coffey speech to World Bank.
“The views of one articulate and affluent banker, businessman, lawyer, or acolyte economist are the equal of several thousand welfare mothers in the corridors of political power.” – Coffey quoting Galbraith, speech to World Bank
ON NOBEL PRIZE ECONOMIST HECKMAN & ECONOMIC BENEFITS
“The extension of kindergarten should be seen as a first step; it needs to be followed by… full-day care through age six….
James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning U.S. economist, has demonstrated that the economic benefits from investment in early child development far outstrip dollars spent on infrastructure.” Hertzman Van Sun Sept 8/09
WHAT HECKMAN REALLY SAYS
“None of this evidence supports universal preschool programs.”
“The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children, p. 35
“People are very worried about the central government inculcating values in their children that they don’t agree with.”
”It’s essential that … early childhood provision doesn’t come to resemble a government bureaucracy”
Heckman supports an approach targeting the “most disadvantaged” using “vouchers …for private sector diversity and choice.” He supports programs run by “religious groups, social groups, and communities”.
“An Interview with James Heckman” pp 24-29 http://www.bernardvanleer.org/Family_stress_Safeguarding_young_childrens_care_environment
UBC ECONOMIST KEVIN MILLIGAN ON MISREPRESENTATION OF HECKMAN
“it is really quite jaw-dropping to me how his
[Heckman’s] work has been grossly misrepresented by the advocates of full-day kindergarten. I think this comes from the fact that he is a Nobel Prize winner…. And for that reason,
they want to ride on those coattails…. And to use his evidence as intellectual cover for the defense of a universal program is, I think, a misuse of his evidence.”
Dr Kevin Milligan interview
http://www.imfcanada.org/article_files/eReview_September_22_10.pdf
ON THE OUTCOMES FOR CHILDREN IN DAYCARE AND ECD PROGRAMS
“Pro-social behaviour scores were lowest for children in licensed day care and highest for children in unregulated home care and relative care”
Hertzman/HELP – Stats Can National Data Sets: Sources of Information for Canadian Child Care Data p.14
“participating in early childhood care and education programs and services at the age of 2 and 3 had little direct association with children’s home and school outcomes in Kindergarten.”
Hertzman/HELP The association of early childhood care and education to children’s experiences in Kindergarten p17
“Most licensed daycare in Canada” is of “minimal to mediocre quality.” You Bet I Care! 2 – HELP’s Goelman et al
>”The majority of children age 0-12 in centres do not receive adequate amounts or types of experiences to promote language and cognitive development.” G. Doherty, Quality & Predictors of Quality in Canadian Child Care p. 4
ON ‘INTEGRATING’ EARLY LEARNING & CAREThe OECD, UNESCO and the CRRU published a “blueprint” stating that “integration” means a “paradigm shift” toward a “new order” in which child rearing is a “shared responsibility between state and family”
“The challenge is… to avoid the tendency to revive the idea of family primacy over early childhood.”
“An integrated approach to early childhood education and care” links at http://www.kidsfirstcanada.org/Haddad-analysis.pdf
The goal is a “new child”, “the public child”. CRRU “The OECD and the Reconciliation Agenda: Competing Blueprints” p25
The “early child development industry” has a “business imperative” with “potential to spawn new approaches to data collection,… government policy, and advocacy.” Coffey World Bank speech
Kids First Parent Association of Canada www.kidsfirstcanada.org 604-291-0088*empowering parents*
*informed choice with equality in child care*
