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As the summer draws to an end, and election talk is high, parents across Waterloo Region scramble to find quality child-care spaces in a patchwork system of care that was only further weakened when the Stephen Harper government cancelled the national child care program.
Harper needs a reality check: data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation (OECD) places Canada dead last in terms of public spending on early learning and child care programs. You will not hear the Conservatives talk about child care or supports for families; that trick worked once in the 2006 election.
Included in the 2006 Conservative election platform was a promise to build 125,000 new spaces and fund a choice-in-child-care monthly allowance for children under six. This choice concept must seem ironic to parents who are waiting for child care or can't afford the high cost.
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It's time for Harper to admit his child care plan isn't working. The so-called child care benefit doesn't pay for child care. Despite a promise to create new spaces, Conservative policies haven't led to a single new space being created in Canada. When the Harper government offered businesses money to set up on-site child care, none stepped forward. It's time to recognize that child care is essential for families, and that government funding is needed to both open new child care spaces as well as help families pay the high costs which can easily be more than $10,000 a year per child.
A national framework is needed, one that sets standards and ensures accountability. A federal plan that would create quality and affordable child care programming would help all families in Canada but especially those children who, through no fault of their own, find themselves victims of their parents' socio-economic reality. Without intervention programs that address nutrition, early language and literacy support and diagnosis, cycles of poverty continue.
Canada has made no progress on the child poverty portfolio in 20 years. Meanwhile, the Conservatives stay the course with their tough-on- crime agenda: more space for prisoners, less for toddlers
Where is the logic?
Consider the positive impact that a quality child care program can make in the life of a child, their parents, the economy and the social cohesion of communities.
We need a plan. Children and families need leadership.
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- reprinted from the Waterloo Record