EXCERPTS

Big-box child care is invading Canadian communities and putting quality child care and a possible national non-profit program at risk, says a Toronto MP.

NDP child-care critic Olivia Chow was in Halifax on Thursday hosting a round table with child-care providers in Halifax on the last day of a week of visits to communities across the country.

ABC, an Australian multinational child-care corporation, has come to Canada after buying more than 1,000 child-care centres in the United States. Letters of interest have been sent to child-care operators in Ontario and British Columbia.

"Our government needs to look at the Australian experience, where big-box child-care corporations dominate and 70 per cent of all centres are run by for-profit providers," Ms. Chow said in a release Thursday.

"With so many children on waiting lists across Canada, everyday families are looking for an answer," said the MP, whose early-learning and child-care proposal returns to Parliament for third reading on Nov. 20, the International Day of the Child.

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- reprinted from the Halifax Chronicle Herald