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.
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.
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.
Labour market participation among mothers has nonetheless rocketed. And for a country that could get this kind of tricky experiment right, the gains would be huge.
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