See text below.
Re: Tories' approach to child care is reasonable, Apr. 12.
I assume that letter-writer Lorraine McNamara, who is national president of REAL Women of Canada, and her group are all parents who take exception to what she calls "paid lobbyists."
She implies that real parents are not opposed to the Conservatives' $1,200 taxable allowance, while the paid lobbyists insist on a system of early learning that would actually offer families a choice.
I am the national volunteer chairperson of the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada and I am a real parent (of three sons).
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In fact, unlike the gun lobby or the tobacco lobby, there are no professional child-care lobbyists. The advocates are just parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and caregivers and employers and farmers and senators and school boards and nurses associations and business executives and city councils and thousands of other working Canadians, including Olympic stars.
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Please check out www.buildchildcare.ca and read the poignant words of the 30,000 Canadians of every walk of life who are not being paid by anyone to ask the Conservative government, the opposition leaders and the provincial premiers to preserve the bilateral agreements and our nascent child-care system long enough for it to begin to offer Canadians what we have been waiting for since the 70s, in addition to income supports for families.
* Debra Mayer, Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada
- reprinted from the Ottawa Citizen