Canada is showing that it’s possible to have universal, affordable childcare. Is the UK brave enough to follow? | Gaby Hinsliff

If we treated this service as vital state infrastructure, it could make a huge difference to parents - and to the economy

You can't get much for 5.50 nowadays. A takeaway coffee and a muffin, maybe; a pint and a packet of crisps, outside London. But in parts of Canada, roughly that amount can buy you a day's childcare. Or it can, at least, if you can find a nursery place.

The country is now three years into a post-pandemic social experiment, offering parents heavily (and expensively) subsidised childcare for what is by envious British standards a staggeringly cheap C$10 a day. The idea is that ultimately this multibillion-dollar state programme will pretty much pay for itself, thanks to the boost in GDP expected to be provided by more parents going out to work. But arguably, its biggest insight has been treating childcare less as some kind of perk the state sadly can't afford right now and more as what Chrystia Freeland, Canada's deputy prime minister, calls social infrastructure": an essential part of the national plumbing, like commuter trains or fast broadband or any other thrusting great multibillion-pound building project we are wearily prepared to believe will ultimately be worth it.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist