Excerpts from the open letter:
I am writing this letter on an issue that is critical for the future of our country.
There are more than two million children under the age of six in this country. I'm sure you agree that they deserve the best developmental learning opportunities and quality care that Canada can offer. Not only because they are our future workforce and the next generation of leaders, thinkers and innovators, but also because they, too, are citizens.
We are among the wealthiest nations on earth. Yet as a recent OECD study found, we have an inadequate, fragmented and underfunded patchwork of early learning and child care services which compares extremely unfavourably to many other developed nations….
A key component of a new social development agenda is to bring Canada's approach to early learning and child care into the 21st Century. And for that to happen, the new system must be built on a solid policy and financial foundation.
Yes, we will have to work around the patchwork that we have now. But we must not base the new system on the failings of the old.