Key national organizations, including Chid Care Now, Oxfam Canada, Campaign 2000, the Child Care Resource and Research Unit, have released a federal plan to bring affordable child care to all who want it.
“The Affordable Child Care for all Plan is the culmination of extensive consultations, investigation and evidence-based policy discussions over the past year involving a broad and diverse array of organizations,” said Morna Ballantyne, Executive Director of Child Care Now.
Released in the lead up to the next federal election, the Affordable Child Care for All Plan offers all the federal political parties a roadmap to building a robust child care system over the next ten years. The plan is shaped by Canadian and international research on the best way to make high quality early learning and child care accessible,and inclusive of children of all abilities and family circumstance.
The Affordable Child Care for All Plan solves three big challenges simultaneously: high parent fees, lack of availability, and raising quality by improving the wages and working conditions of those who work in the child care sector without increasing parent fees.
The Plan calls for the Government of Canada to:
- Enact federal legislation enshrining its commitment to child care, similar to what now exists for health care
- Increase federal funding for early learning and child care incrementally each year over the next ten years to reach the recognized international spending benchmark by 2030
- Negotiate Early Learning and Child Care funding agreements with the provinces and territories to support concrete plans with timetables for:
a) expanding not-for-profit early learning and child care services in a variety of settings
b) setting and reducing parent fees while increasing direct operational funding of services
c) developing and implementing a workforce strategy to address staff training, recruitment and retention.
- Continue to work with Indigenous leaders and communities to operationalize, implement and expand on the Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care Framework
To show your support, send a message to your member of parliament asking them to publicly commit to supporting the Affordable Child Care for All Plan.