Excerpts:
Why SOS?
Childcare in Ontario is in crisis. The optimism generated by Premier McGuinty's initial commitment to Full-Day Early Learning in 2007 has been replaced by alarm as centre closures, sky-high parent fees, two-year long waiting lists for subsidies and spaces and for-profit operations now define Ontario childcare.
Despite abundant advice from experts and community members, only the Full-Day Kindergarten (FDK) element of the "extended and integrated Full-Day Early Learning program" was implemented with little financial or policy support for childcare. Instead, FDK was layered on top of the "unsolved web of problems" plaguing childcare - massive under-funding, provincial dollars flat-lined for close to two decades, subsidy shortages that leave most families out and no provincial early childhood education and care (ECEC) plan or policy.
If there is no emergency action to salvage needed services and begin planning for a real childcare system, high quality ECEC options for Ontario's children and families will be far fewer now and in the future.
Goals, smart policy, immediate action
Many Ontarians have an interest in ensuring that ECEC is strengthened, not irrevocably weakened. Many of us have long advocated for a universally accessible, high quality, publicly-funded, public and non-profit childcare system with a variety of goals in mind:
• Early education;
• Smart economic/workforce policy;
• Equity;
• Social justice and fighting poverty.