Child poverty in Ontario: Promises to keep

Excerpts from the Report Card: Affordable, high quality early learning and child care programs promote children's well being while enabling their parents to work or receive training. Analysis of Quebec's $7/day child care program shows that it helps mothers leave welfare and participate in the workforce. Increased tax revenues from mothers' employment now cover 40% of the cost of Quebec's child care program. Clearly access to early learning and child care is part of a successful poverty reduction strategy for parents. In Ontario access is quite limited. There are only regulated child care spaces for 10.7% of children aged 0-12. In 2003 the Liberal election platform committed $300 million in provincial funding for its Best Start child care plan. The province created almost 15,000 child care spaces with federal funding under the bilateral child care agreement, but the federal government has cancelled the funding effective March 2007. Unlike some other provinces which have kept expanding their programs with provincial funds, Ontario chose to spread the final federal installment of funding over four years. Without adequate and stable funding some early learning and child care programs will have to close their doors. Campaign 2000 urges the Ontario government to honour its commitment to families with an initial investment of $300 million in 2007/08 in early learning and child care, and a further $300 million to make up for the shortfall in federal funding. This investment should be part of a ten year strategy with additional federal and provincial government funding to develop a comprehensive system of regulated early learning and child care services available to all children aged 0-12 in Ontario.