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EXCERPTS
Myth No.1: There is a shortage of day-care spaces in Alberta.
Myth No. 2: Letting the market decide is always the best policy.
Ask the Liberals and New Democrats why they think those points are valid and they'll point to statistics and what they call abject reality: there are some 3,000 unused day-care spaces across Alberta, and very few child-care workers can afford to work in them.
As the Conservative government takes public submissions on proposed new regulations for day cares, their opposite numbers want to see an admission that government deregulation caused a glut of privately owned centres and, in turn, low wages caused by their need to stay competitive.
That then led to the real shortage: quality staff. Few who take two years of schooling are willing to accept close to half the wages they'd receive in similar other fields, they say.
"The reality is that this government took a day-care system that was working reasonably well, deregulated it, eliminated direct subsidies to child-care centres in favour of giving parents a subsidy, and now we have a system that is a lemon," said New Democrat Raj Pannu.
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Weslyn Mather, the Liberal critic, said it's positive that the department has begun accrediting day-care facilities based in part on tougher worker qualifications. But she said the abject failure of deregulation - which isn't the fault of many progressive private centres - must be turned around quickly.
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The regulatory hearings give the public a chance to collaborate on the regulations that will govern the new Child Care Licensing Act when it receives royal assent, likely in spring 2008.
- reprinted from the Edmonton Sun