Governments must not allow children and families to bear the brunt of austerity cuts that will only create bigger problems in the long run. Children and families must be kept high on the agenda.
CHILDCARE RESOURCE AND RESEARCH UNIT
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Voices for childcare
Voices for child care
The single step that would do the most to reduce inequality has nothing to do with finance at all. It's an expansion of early childhood education.
Child care is our society's signal that we really value children. Without a strong commitment to child care, we undermine not only our children's future but our community's strength.
Early childhood programmes are an important means of guaranteeing the rights of young children....Strong foundations for children are also strong foundations for building more equitable societies in which all may prosper.
For decades we've realized that women are working, men are working and the second thing we've realized is that there's a great benefit to children from working and playing with others and learning with others. The notion somehow that child care is some form of alien abduction is just completely preposterous.
If you think your small children and your young families are a priority... you pay the amount of money necessary. It's a choice you make.
I want to be clear that issues like equal pay, family leave, child care and others are not just women's issues, they are family issues and economic issues. Our progress in these areas is an important measure of whether we are truly fulfilling the promise of our democracy for all our people.
It is no coincidence that the first Education for All goal focuses on the youngest and most vulnerable children. Improving their well-being at the earliest age must be an integral and systematic component of education and poverty reduction policies. High-level political endorsement is essential to getting early childhood care and education on the agenda.
In strong and vibrant democracies, a generous social-welfare state is not a road to serfdom but rather to fairness, economic equality and international competitiveness.
This year, we are going to triple the number of daycare centers, making the same amount of progress that we had made in the previous 30 years.
My goal, by the end of my administration, is... to offer all Chilean children an equal chance to develop during the first eight years of their lives, whatever their social origin, gender, place of birth or family situation.
Take a national child care program, in my view the biggest loss in the Liberal downfall. What if the losing parties, who all favour it, impose it? They have the votes to do so. But rather than let his government fall on the matter, what if Mr. Harper agreed to it, on condition that his own child care subsidy, or tax benefit, be enacted, too.
I am convinced that when future generations look back they will recognize in our pan-Canadian approach to early learning, a project of nation-building in the same sense as universal medicare.
We have been clear from the very beginning that we need a national child care program that is worth its salt and that actually will deliver on the principles that so many people have worked on based on research from many jurisdictions in the world. We need a national child care program that will provide a quality product for which we can all be proud and one we will speak to in the same tone as we speak today as Canadians to our health care system and our education system.
Everybody now understands, I think...that early learning and child care fused together is the kind of objective which any civilized society strives for, and that it becomes an indispensable and vital dimension of a child's life, enhancing all of the family characteristics which shore up the child, but profoundly influencing in the most positive imaginable way the opportunities for the child.
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