Excerpt

The Covid-19 pandemic shone a spotlight on how important child care is to our communities and how essential child care will be to our social and economic recovery. Over the past year a growing chorus of child care champions joined long-time advocates to demand real action on child care from governments. The 2021 Federal Budget’s investment of $30 Billion over five years and permanent ongoing funding of approximately $9.2 Billion annually has the potential to transform child care in Canada. In Ontario, this new funding could mean that the provincial child care budget more than doubles. This opens up possibilities for regulated child care to: become more affordable for parents; provide decent work and pay for educators; and serve many more children and families across the province, including those in currently underserved communities. We need our provincial government to work collaboratively with the federal government, local service system managers and communities to make this vision a reality.