Child Care Now congratulates the federal, provincial and territorial ministers most responsible for early learning and child care for agreeing to develop a multilateral child care workforce strategy when they met July 12, 2023 in Iqaluit to discuss and share their priorities for early learning and child care. The Ministers acknowledged the early learning and child care workforce needs improved working conditions and compensation to reflect the professional education, experience and responsibilities of early childhood educators, something that Child Care Now has long called for to support recruitment and retention.
“The meeting of Ministers must be followed by immediate action to improve wages, benefits and pensions for early childhood educators and the child care workforce” said Morna Ballantyne, Child Care Now’s Executive Director.
“We also need to improve working conditions through significant changes to regulations and operations,” Ballantyne continued. “Without improvements qualified early childhood educators will continue to leave the field and it will be impossible to get them back, or to convince new graduates of post-secondary ECE programs to work in community child care.”
Ballantyne said that the commitments by federal, provincial and territorial governments to create 250,000 new licensed spaces for children 0-5 cannot be realized without a fully publicly funded strategy to expand the child care workforce.
Child Care Now calls on all levels of government to ensure the multilateral workforce strategy is developed through transparent processes that engage the sector and child care advocates. We look forward to participating in the development of this strategy, and will continue to advocate for significant investments in compensation and quality work environments.