As hundreds of parents in 14 for-profit child care centres are reeling from the news that their fees will go up by 150 per cent in January, CUPE members, child care workers, and families came together to mark the start of ten days of action in support of $10-a-day child care.
Child care advocates rallied on the steps of Queen’s Park as children played under parachutes, early childhood educators shared stories of their challenges in the sector, and parents delivered impassioned speeches targeting Doug Ford’s Conservatives.
All of the 14 centres that recently announced they’d be pulling out of the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) program are private, for-profit operators and half are part of the same tangled corporate chain. One centre will see monthly fee increases from $928 to $2,565.
“CUPE Ontario fought long and hard for affordable child care and we are not willing to see those gains rolled back. While parents are clamoring for non-profit, high quality care, this government has been doing everything they can to expand corporate operators backed by private equity,” said Yolanda McClean, Secretary Treasurer of CUPE Ontario. “If relying on the market worked, we wouldn’t have a crisis, workers wouldn’t be leaving the sector in droves, and parents wouldn’t be stuck on waitlists. The market clearly doesn’t work and operators should not be making profits on the backs of our children.”
Other provinces have utilized the same Federal program to better effect. They’ve expanded the system to meet demand, put in wage grids for workers, and provided appropriate benefits plans and pensions. Those critical gains remain the focus of CUPE education workers and would go a long way, advocates say, to solving the workforce crisis in the sector.
“It seems like sport for the Minister of Education. It’s a shell game as they blame Ottawa while celebrating entrepreneurs. But this is more than politics for the workers struggling to get by and parents desperate for care,” said Carolyn Ferns, Policy Coordinator with the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care. “It’s no surprise how we got here. The publicly funded system is not perfect but the solution is not to scrap it or give parents vouchers. We need to strengthen and expand the plan.