Description:
Over the past two decades, Australian child care expert Lynne Wannan has witnessed the impact of large-scale for-profit early childhood education (ECE) facilities in her own country. With help from the Canadian Child Care Advocacy Association, she embarked on a three-week tour of Canada in October 2005 to share lessons from Down Under with her Canadian colleagues.
The CCSD sponsored her concluding talk in a briefing session on October 20 at the National Press Club in Ottawa. During that session, Wannan shared both cautionary tales from Australia and her impressions of the Canadian child care situation with a wide variety of social analysts and advocates. She also answered questions about pay scales for child care workers and culturally appropriate child care for Aboriginal children.
The session was timely. Just a month later, controversy exploded in Quebec over the increasing presence of commercial child care chains in what has been seen as Canada's model provincial child care system. Then child care - and in particular, the idea of funding parents rather than a system - became a major election issue.
This document provides a report of Wannan's remarks.