Need for subsidized daycare

May 13, 2016

Canadian parents may soon benefit from a national child care agreement. The federal government promised $400 million next year for daycare needs to provinces and territories conditional on the provinces and federal government agreeing on a national child-care framework that would establish ground rules for federal involvement in what is an area of provincial jurisdiction. According to political scientist and interim director of the school of public policy and governance at the University of Toronto Linda White, any federal child-care framework would have to invest in buildings, wage enhancements for early childhood educators, operating grants to day care centres and subsidies to either put fees on a sliding scale based on income, or eliminate them altogether. “If you want to get to accessible, inclusive, affordable and high quality (child care), it requires quite a massive infusion of cash into both the funding and the delivery of programs,” she said. The full article is available here.