2017 Federal Budget Submission
August 5, 2016
The Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada (CCAAC) welcomes this opportunity to share our federal budget priorities with the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance, and with Canadians.
Our priorities reflect government commitments in the 2015 election platform and Budget 2016, which declared that “high-quality, affordable child care is more than a convenience—it’s a necessity.” The platform and budget made a commitment to work with provinces, territories, and Indigenous communities to establish a National Framework on Early Learning and Child Care, and the budget identified funds for child care for 2017/18.
We have already communicated with government about our goals: a robust, evidence-based early learning and child care framework, and we have cautioned against transferring federal funds to provinces/territories merely to bolster the current patchwork approach.
Fulfilling election promises and achieving the broadly-shared goal of universal, high quality, affordable child care across Canada will require both a solid policy framework and sustained financial commitment from the federal government.
We are asking the federal government to deliver funding through two dedicated streams under specified policy conditions:
- Funding to empower and resource Indigenous communities to design, deliver, and govern services that meet their needs and aspirations, consistent with recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission;
- Federal transfers to provinces and territories that commit to system-building within a collaboratively developed, Canada-wide ECEC1 policy framework based on the principles of universality, high quality and comprehensiveness.
To read the full brief, click here.