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EXCERPTS
Should the region stop subsidizing child-care fees for 2,800 needy families to save $4.7 million?
Should it stop subsidizing the low wages of child-care workers to save $2.5 million?
Or should it stop spending $500,000 a year to help special-needs children?
These are some of the tough questions facing Waterloo Region councillors as they grapple with a $8-million shortfall next year in child-care funding from senior government.
"It is all a bad scenario," Waterloo Coun. Jane Mitchell said yesterday. "This is so serious. This is people's wages and people's lives we are talking about."
At a committee meeting, councillors slammed Prime Minister Stephen Harper for cancelling former prime minister Paul Martin's national child-care program. They also blamed the province for chronic underfunding of daycare.
"Maybe they need to know what their actions have done," Cambridge Coun. Jane Brewer said of local MPs, adding a letter should be sent to Harper explaining how his decision has affected families.
Catherine Fife, co-ordinator of the local Child Care Action Network, said
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"You can brief the federal politicians all you want, but they aren't listening. They don't care."
Regional Chair Ken Seiling told councillors that senior government members are aware of the ramifications of their actions, since they've been lobbied hard by municipal politicians and child-care advocates.
Seiling said Deb Matthews, provincial minister of children and youth services, told him two weeks ago, "don't be in a hurry to cut" as the province is still pressing the federal government to provide more money for child care.
But regional council will have to decide later this spring how to address the $8-million shortfall. Families need to warned if their subsidies are going to be cut, said Mary Parker, regional director of children's services.
Parker told councillors it would take about 10 months to reduce, through attrition, the 2,800 families now receiving monthly subsidies from the region.
If council decides to continue funding daycare subsidies, the money could come from other regional programs or by raising taxes, some councillors said.
"Some things are more important than others," Cambridge Coun. Claudette Millar said.
- reprinted from The Record