See text below.
EXCERPTS
The Early Learning Childcare Coalition of Saskatchewan, along with child-care advocacy groups from across Canada are urging the Canada's premiers to revisit the establishment of a national child-care strategy.
Child-care advocates are asking the premiers to lobby the federal government for an additional $2.2 billion in transfer payments to address this country's child-care crisis.
...
In Saskatchewan, there are 185,000 children under the age of 12 but only 11,000 child-care spaces, she said.
"Funding the social and physical infrastructure for child care is critical,'' McCrorie said, adding working families need options that come with accountability and transparency.
"Our governments need to ensure that child-care options are expanded by adding and upgrading facilities, addressing recruitment and retention of child care and early learning professionals and ensuring that child care is operated in a public and accountable manner.
"Parents need affordable, quality child care in order to return to work. Women are being left out of the workforce because the costs of child care are outpacing the income they would earn returning to the workforce."
McCrorie said a national child-care strategy is investing money in public services that will benefit provincial economies and the labour force.
Speaking as a parent, McCrorie said there is lots of good research on how to make a national child-care system work. A good start in Saskatchewan, she said, would be offering pre-kindergarten programs, which is only available in select schools, to all children in the province.
A national child-care program could entail increasing the number of day-care spots for infants and children under 12 and possibly extending maternity leaves or increasing employment benefits for women on maternity leave, which are part of a broad family policy that supports women and families, she said.
...
- Leader-Post