Excerpt
Recommendations
The Childcare Resource and Research Unit urges the federal government to prioritize building a fully affordable, accessible, quality, inclusive system of primarily not-for-profit childcare as a key economic and social priority, consistent with the 2021 federal budget and extension of bilateral agreements through 2031. Specifically:
Recommendation 1. Provide adequate financial and policy support to provinces/territories to expedite growth of non-profit, public and Indigenous childcare with a target of expanding licensed childcare to cover at least 65% of children up to age six in each province/territory by 2031;
Recommendation 2. Require each province/territory to formulate its own comprehensive, publicly led expansion strategy to meet the target of 65% coverage in primarily non-profit, public, and Indigenous childcare programs, equitably distributed;
Recommendation 3. Ensure that – with the exception of federal funding to for-profits existing when the first five-year agreements were signed or specified in the bilateral agreements – only non-profit, public and Indigenous childcare programs receive new federal funding;
Recommendation 4. Supplement the Child Care Expansion Loan Program with an enhanced grant program to accelerate needed expansion of non-profit, public, and Indigenous childcare;
Recommendation 5. Incentivize provinces/territories to improve recruitment and retention, increase participation in the childcare workforce and raise the level of ECE PSE qualifications by introducing new federal workforce funds and making their transfer to provinces /territories contingent on development of full salary grids, defined benefit pension plans, province-wide benefit plans, and other working condition measures;
Recommendation 6. Develop a robust ELCC data strategy and an ELCC research funding program to provide the tools to monitor progress, account for public spending, support policy development, answer key research questions, and evaluate the effects of policy and program change.
Recommendation 7. Additionally, the Childcare Resource and Research Unit – a non-profit organization whose lens on childcare has been firmly feminist, intersectional and equality seeking for more than 40 years, and a recipient of Women’s Program and WAGE research grants – urges the federal government to continue to provide the Department of Women and Gender Equality (WAGE) with the necessary funds to advance women’s rights and gender equality.
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