Excerpts
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The $10-a-day child care plan came at the right time, delivering affordability to families, improvements for child care workers, and predictability to non-profit and public child care providers after the deeply unsettling upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic and social impacts.
Today, we are again facing destabilization but this time it’s President Trump and his henchmen sowing chaos, taking away jobs and putting at undermining our economic and social security.
Holding on to the $10-a-day child care program and improving it will help get us through. Families need reliable, affordable, and high-quality child care to keep working. Also, a lot of jobs will come from building new centres and expanding child care services.
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Of course, the plan needs improvement. Much more needs to be done to attract and retain qualified child care workers and grow the program. Every province and territory must improve wages province wide, establish a sector-wide pension plan and health benefits for those who work in child care. Those next steps won’t happen if government support for universal child care declines.
On Thursday, the prime minister announced almost every province and territory had signed on to extend the $10-a-day plan for five more years. NDP, Liberal and Conservative provincial governments all said yes. Only Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe and Alberta’s Danielle Smith refused, throwing their constituents into peril.
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Excerpts shared from Rennick, C. (2025, March 11), originally published in The Hamilton Spectator. Shared with permission from the author, Candace Rennick. See full article attached.