Excerpts from the Action Plan:
Manitoba's Five-Year Plan for Child Care (2002&em;2007) set a clear direction and ambitious goals to maintain and improve the quality, accessibility and affordability of early learning and child care for Manitoba's children and their families. The plan includes children with disabilities. With significant new provincial investments and financial support from the federal government, most of the major elements of the plan will be completed by March 2007. A new five-year federal funding commitment to early learning and child care (2005-06 to 2009-10) allows Manitoba to keep building on these achievements. This new federal revenue will not displace existing provincial investments. It will support new improvements and expansion of Manitoba's regulated early learning and child care system with a focus on children under age six.
Manitoba's Action Plan &em; Key Objectives describes how Manitoba intends to invest new federal funds to meet the targets set out in the five-year plan. It also outlines how the Province will fulfill the objectives of the 2005 Agreement-in-Principle between Manitoba and the Government of Canada. Manitoba's plans are based on what Manitobans have said are their main priorities for improving early learning and child care. Funding will go to five key areas:
1. workforce stabilization and development
2. sustainability of existing non-profit centres
3. affordability/accessibility of child care
4. improving quality environments
5. additional steps to enhance quality
Manitoba intends to build upon its early learning and child care system to emphasize the QUAD principles of quality, universally inclusive, accessible and developmental. To that end, Manitoba's Child Care Program is committed to achieving specific objectives, which will be reported in the annual Early Childhood Development Progress Reports to Manitobans.