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This week, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty announced a plan to launch a full-day, fully funded and fully integrated child-care and kindergarten program and to do it starting in 2010.
If the program goes ahead, it would be the most far-reaching of its kind in Canada. And it has caught the attention of parents throughout the province, and beyond. We aired a clip of two parents weighing in on the proposed all-day child-care and kindergarten program in Ontario.
It's the kind of program that many early childhood educators have been pleading for. But not everyone agrees that it's the best option for children or for taxpayers.
For their thoughts on the proposal, we were joined by three people. Charles Pascal is the Executive Director of the Atkinson Charitable Foundation and the Special Advisor on Early Learning for Ontario. It was his report that proposed the program and he was in Toronto. Susan Prentice is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Manitoba. She has studied the economic impact of childcare and is the co-author of About Canada: Childcare. She was in Winnipeg. And Gabor Mate is a physician and the co-author of Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More than Peers. He was in Prince George, British Columbia.