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EXCERPTS
We are a group of women who are concerned with the action being taken by the new federal Conservative government to scrap the $5-billion child-care agreement that child-care advocates have worked long and hard to secure.
We are now faced with a plan that would give families $1,200 a year for each child under the age of six.
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Families are stressed and many single parents are not able to get into the workforce or even return to school for upgrading because they don't have safe and reliable child care.
The only families this will help are the ones who can afford to have one parent stay home and look after their children.
Diane Finley (MP for Haldimand-Norfolk and minister of Human Resources and Skills Development) has stated that her government's plan will especially help people in rural areas by providing choices to shift workers. But we ask, what choice? There is an even higher shortage of child care in our rural area than the rest of the province. An extra $23 per week in our pockets won't change that. We need day-care spaces.
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* JoAnne DuBois is a Community developer, Community Legal Clinic, Brant-Haldimand-Norfolk
- reprinted from the Simcoe Reformer