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Daycare is an ongoing issue in Ontario, and MPP Cheri DiNovo said parents and daycare providers in Parkdale-High Park know this community is one of the worst hit when it comes to wait times, daily costs, and new openings.
Seven-month-old Delilah Cabilio is a case in point.
Her parents Adrian Cabilio and Elizabeth Bobrow attended a recent town hall on the topic of childcare with Delilah in tow. Bobrow explained her struggle to find daycare seems endless. Every provider she calls and visits in her west-end neighbourhood has waiting lists of two to three years.
But it doesn't end there.
DiNovo, who hosted the town hall Jan. 26, explained that in addition to the shortage of childcare spaces, providers can't cut through the red tape to open new spots, while the cost is becoming prohibitive for some families. Even the families who can afford childcare are waiting, sometimes for years, to find a space for their child.
Compounding all of this, the implementation of all-day kindergarten will have massive impacts on the existing childcare system, she said.
One provider who works in a Parkdale school daycare said she has been given no indication of how the transition to all-day kindergarten will affect them or if they will even be able to stay in the school if the influx of kindergarten students displaces them.
"I have been working on this issue since the 1970s," DiNovo said. "It was one of the core, I'm going to use the F-word, feminist demands for women's equality."
Access to affordable, quality childcare is essential for women to be able to work outside of the home, DiNovo said.
"That still is not happening and it isn't happening for a number of reasons, but mainly because we don't have a federal government or a provincial government that has stepped up to the plate."
The daycare town hall, held at Bishop Marrocco/Thomas Merton Secondary School, also included Ward 13 Councillor Sarah Doucette, Ward 14 Councillor Gord Perks and Katie Arnup from the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care.
Arnup explained because of the near crisis situation in the industry, childcare providers are in a position where they may have to increase fees upward of 30 percent to deal with the current financial climate. That would translate to parents paying in the area of $19,650 a year for childcare.
"It really is down to the work of communities organizing and talking to each other now," said Perks.
The province will unveil its budget in the next couple of months and DiNovo said pressure needs to be put on the province in advance of that budget to include money for childcare. The politicians explained the best way to achieve this is for parents and providers to write to the Minister of Education Laurel Broten and other elected officials.
-reprinted from InsideToronto