What's the Deal with Daycare, Anyway?

If you are a parent, you know there is nothing more anxiety inducing than arranging child care. You need to find someone you can trust, but you are on a budget. They need to be nearby, but you are willing to go out of your way for better care if needed. You have to visit. You have to interview the caregivers. You have to closely review the curriculum. You have to review state regulatory ratings and violations for the potential daycare. You also have to find someplace that works with your work hours and that ensures all attendees are vaccinated (because not ever day care does in this state). As an American parent, this is completely overwhelming. So overwhelming, in fact, we arranged to have a combination of family help and a wonderful private nanny in our home because there was no available space in an acceptable day care that met our expectations and worked with our schedules. Most American parents are not lucky enough to afford such luxuries and must depend on center-based day care options.

Needless to say, the prospect of securing childcare for our very-soon-to-be two year old during the move to Canada was terrifying.

The Canadian daycare experience has been drastically different, which is especially surprising given we have been arranging day care from a distance. In the province of Ontario, where we will be living, you complete one daycare application online and can have the information sent to up to ten high quality, provincially regulated day cares in your geographic region. How do you know where the day cares are in comparison to your home or work? Simple, the application has an interactive map feature that will help you identify prospective day cares and their distance from those locations.

Now, the true beauty and elegance of the Canadian system is this: After you submit the application, the directors of the Day Cares ACTUALLY CALL YOU when a space becomes available. You then go through the paperwork and visit the centre to ensure it is a good fit all around. Because it is Canada, there are also some aspects (e.g. up to date vaccinations) that are non-negotiable for all day cares.

The day care provides lunch and snacks everyday, as well as outdoor playtime, story time, nap time, and a strong play-based curriculum designed for both enhancing development and school preparation. As a parent in Canada, I do not have to by 37 glue sticks or 15 boxes of tissues, because my fees actually cover those needs in addition to paying the teachers at the centre a living wage. Both the day care and my new job offer some flexibility with the scheduling, and the ratio of teacher to child is 1:5 instead of the 1:10 ratio it would be for a 2-3 year old in the state of South Carolina.

While the Canadian system is not perfect (you still must submit that application well in advance of when your child needs care), it is still quite different from the experience I have had as an American parent. High quality day care has been consistently proven to positively impact the cognitive and socioemotional development of children (Peisner-Feinberg et al., 2001; Vandell, Henderson, & Wilson, 1988). By making finding a day care easy, and appropriately regulating the curriculum of those day cares, Canada makes it easy to connect parents to the care the need for their children and ensure they can feel confident in the quality of that care.

Work it Girl, or How NAFTA Became My Favourite Trade Agreement

Whenever I share with anyone that we are moving to Canada, there are always many questions or comments that arise. Isn't it more expensive there? Trudeau vs. Trump. Snow: how are you going to handle that? Free health care sounds awesome.

For the record, it is more expensive, but no more so than moving to a major urban area in the U.S., I'm pro Trudeau, it's called a snowblower, and yes, yes it is. 

Prime Minister Trudeau with Jia Panpan & Jia Yueyue of the Toronto Zoo.
Image from https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau.

While these are all relatively simple, one question that comes up often, but has a more complex answer is this: How do you get a job in Canada anyway?

The short answer, in my case, is NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.

So, what did the process of finding a job in Canada look like and why has NAFTA become so important to me? Here is what the process looked like:

1. Apply for a job in Canada. Most librarian jobs in both the U.S. and Canada are posted on the American Library Association's Joblist. This is especially true of academic library positions as such advertising is typically required by human resources procedures. 
2. Wait for contact. Normally this takes several months for academic positions. My wait time was around six weeks.
3. Phone interview.
4. Campus interview - about a month later. 
5. Job offer, kind of - takes two weeks. Note, when they say two weeks, they actually mean exactly that amount of time. This is not the "we will call in two weeks" but you hear in two days if you are the top candidate, like in the U.S. This is a job offer, kind of, because you will know if you are the top candidate, but they leave the job offer up to you. Did you like Canada? Will your family like it? Do you want to go through the hassle of immigrating? i.e. The "do you like us, do you really, really like us???" phase.
6. Actual job offer.
7. Salary negotiation. Under no circumstances should you take their first offer. And pay attention to the exchange rate; right now, Canadian dollars are worth less than U.S. dollars. 
8. Sign contract.

If that basically sounds like the academic hiring process for all librarian jobs, it totally is. However, throughout the process in small, but meaningful ways, NAFTA has been stepping in to help with the job search. The real story of the search looks like this:

1. Apply for a job in Canada. Most librarian jobs in both the U.S. and Canada are posted on the American Library Association's Joblist. This is especially true of academic library positions as such advertising is typically required by human resources procedures. 
2. NAFTA allows individuals in certain positions, including librarians, to seek professional positions in the other NAFTA countries and be considered in the same manner as citizens of those countries. For a complete listing of these professions, see Sec. 214.6 of the USCIS.
3. Wait for contact. Normally this takes several months for academic positions. My wait time was around six weeks.
4. Phone interview.
5. Phone interviews are easy - Canada uses the same basic phone number structure and country code (1) as the U.S. The area codes in the Waterloo/Kitchener area are generally 519. NAFTA has made inter-country telecommunications across North America easier and cheaper since implementation.
6. Campus interview - about a month later. 
7. Job offer, kind of - takes two weeks. Note, when they say two weeks, they actually mean exactly that amount of time. This is not the "we will call in two weeks" but you hear in two days if you are the top candidate like in the U.S. This is a job offer, kind of, because you will know if you are the top candidate, but they leave the job offer up to you. Did you like Canada? Will your family like it? Do you want to go through the hassle of immigrating? i.e. The do you like us, do you really, really like us phase.
8. Actual job offer.
9. Once again, because of your specialized profession, you were able to be offered the position, even if there were qualified applicants from Canada. Thanks, NAFTA!
10. Salary negotiation. Under no circumstances should you take their first offer. Remember, Canadian dollars are worth less than U.S. dollars. 
11. Sign contract.
12. The institution you work for will then have to file for a Labour Market Impact Exemption, again based on Sec. 214.6, stating you are an exempt professional with needed skills. 
13. Congratulations, you now have all you need to apply for your Canadian work permit and move to Canada. 

Throughout my life, I have heard significant amounts of grumbling about NAFTA and the impact it has had on American workers. What I did not realize was a trade agreement forged in North America long before I knew librarianship was my calling would make it possible for me to pursue my dream job and become an American worker abroad. The next time you hear a politician railing on about how NAFTA has hurt Americans, remember that it also helps many others, like me, pursue amazing professional opportunities. I know I, for one, will never again take NAFTA for granted.

Oh Canada! Northward Bound

First, the announcement for those who do not know: We are moving to Canada. 

Though it may seem sudden, this move has been in the works for several months. I have happily accepted my dream job as an Instructional Design Librarian for the University of Waterloo Libraries. This is a fantastic opportunity to spend my work life solely devoted to the issues of teaching and learning in libraries with a team and the resources at a large Canadian research institution to support that work.

While the opportunity to do what I have always wished to do, and only that which I have always wished to do, was tempting, the move is not purely about the job. In some ways, it is about the benefits I will have in the position including pensions, a 35 hour work week, more vacation time, a flexible schedule, free health care, and a significantly shorter commute. It is also about family. Living in Southern Ontario puts us within a single day driving distance of almost all of our families, much closer than the two days now required to visit most of our relatives. In other ways, this move is about options. We are in the process of applying for Canadian Permanent Residency and, assuming we are successful with that application, in 4-6 years we can apply for Canadian Citizenship. With that citizenship comes more opportunities, greater access to worldwide agreements within the Commonwealth nations, and a different cultural perspective.

Moving to another country is no small undertaking. We have had to submit to medical examinations, take English language proficiency exams, apply for background checks, submit our educational credentials for analysis, and work through seemingly endless amounts of paperwork to establish everything from cell phone numbers to bank accounts. We have been lucky to find a home rental in a nice family-oriented neighbourhood and are lucky enough to have movers supplied by UW to pack, load, and unload our goods.

How will all of this go? How will we adjust? What things to we love and what drives us crazy? Who knows. This is a huge adventure with high risk and potentially high reward. I want to document the experience and will be blogging about the experiences here. I hope you will follow along with me as we embark on this, the next chapter of our lives.

-Kari