Tell Trudeau and Ford to support child care – not profits

Yes, the demand for child care spaces is very real. The sector is in crisis due to underfunding. Families can’t find care, workers can’t live on low wages, and many operators are facing deficits.

None of this is the fault of public and non-profit child care providers – but of poor provincial implementation. Over the last two years the Ford government has bungled the $10-a-day child care system in our province, with a dated funding formula, a weak workforce strategy and not enough support to expand public and non-profit spaces.

Enter Ontario’s newly minted Education Minister Todd Smith. Giving a strong signal of what might be in his mandate letter, in his first public statement about child care, Smith opens up the idea of further privatizing the child care sector.

In a letter to federal Minister Jenna Sudds, Minister Smith asks the federal government to further increase for-profit child care expansion in Ontario, which under the terms of the Canada-Ontario agreement is supposed to make up 30% of spaces as the sector expands.

This request by Minister Smith is as risky as it is unnecessary.

As Carolyn Ferns and Morna Ballantyne write in the Toronto Star,

“It is unnecessary because Ontario is one of the best positioned provinces to expand public and non-profit child care under the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) plan. With 70% of spaces operated by public and non-profit bodies, meeting expansion targets in this robust and eager sector should have been a slam dunk. Non-profit child care programs have long advocated for more affordable child care and they want to make it happen…. If Ontario had an active plan to expand, coupled with adequate capital and operating funding, the non-profit and public sectors would be able to offer spaces to all the parents on wait-lists desperate to find child care.

But then the Ford government wouldn’t have an excuse to open the floodgates for for-profits.

This brings us to the danger. The further expansion of for-profit child care will destabilize the child care sector, put at risk the popular project to lower parent fees, and divert public funds from quality improvements to profit-making. A more sizable for-profit sector can use their stranglehold over the supply of child care to get public policy changes they need to make more profit including higher parent fees, fewer regulations and rules, and lower minimum wage rates for those who work in child care.

If you think this sounds alarmist, it’s unfortunately already the reality that has played out in other countries and we have seen it happen here in Canada. Just as we’ve seen for-profit providers pack up and leave the sector when it’s profitable to do so.” >> Read the full article.

We need a united voice in support of $10-a-day child care for families and decent work and pay for educations – not more money into private pockets.

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Stand up with ECEs, child care workers, families and children by sending a message to your MP, MPP, Premier Doug Ford, Ontario’s Minister of Education Todd Smith, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Federal Minister of Children, Families and Social Development Jenna Sudds telling them support educators and $10-a-day child care for families – not privatization.