Excerpt
...
“Ontario’s $10-a-day child care rollout is leaving too many behind. Thousands of families are stuck on waiting lists for access to affordable child care. More than half of Ontario’s Early Childhood Educators and child care staff don’t qualify for new wage supports. And while federal funding has increased, provincial child care funding has flatlined since 2018,” said Carolyn Ferns, Policy Coordinator for the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care (OCBCC) and a Board Member of Child Care Now. “CWELCC is an ambitious project and it’s important that we take a moment to highlight its limitations and correct course. That’s what today is about.”
Child care advocates point to a staffing crisis, with some estimates that Ontario will be short 8,500 early childhood educators by 2026, as only the most visible sign of problems to come. Waitlists across the province have closed, centres are running at half capacity, and some families are being asked to keep their children home one day a week because centres just don’t have enough staff.
...
“Canada is missing hundreds of thousands of licensed child care spaces,” said Ferns. “In a cost-of-living crisis Ontario families can’t find a child care space when they need it. The Ontario government and the federal government know that the workforce crisis in child care is holding us back, and now, it’s time for them to urgently address the problem so that families can have child care when they need it.”