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OTTAWA Union members must rise to the challenge of convincing the provincial and federal government to keep child care programs in the not-for-profit sector, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario President Sid Ryan will tell more than 300 social services workers meeting here until April 3.

Ryan speaks at the opening of Staying Public: Globalization and the Challenge to Social Services, at 7:00 p.m., March 31 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, 101 Lyon Street.

If governments allow for-profit child care, the entire system is more likely to fall under restrictive global trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Trade in Services, said Ryan, whose union has 4,500 members working in child care centres in the province. And that matters because there is plenty of evidence that quality is lower in for-profit centres.

Delegates representing 20,000 workers in Ontarios childrens aid societies, associations for community living, child care centres, municipal social services and community agencies will participate in a Friday morning town hall forum on the conference theme with economist Armine Yalnizyan, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives; Nancy Peckford, Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action; and Edgar Godoy, a social services worker and chair of CUPEs national global justice committee. It begins at 9:00 a.m., April 1 at the same location.

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For more information, please contact:
Sid Ryan, President, CUPE Ontario, 416-209-0066 (cell)
Pat Daley, CUPE Communications, 416-616-6142 (cell)