ACORN Votes 2021: Affordable Child Care
Posted September 19, 2021
Posted on September 16, 2021
Posted on September 16, 2021
ACORN Votes 2021: Affordable Child Care
Child care fees in Canada remain sky high. Infant fees is the highest with median infant fees as high as $1800 per month in Toronto. Studies showed that the enrolment in child care centres saw a substantial drop between February and November 2020 and child care fees was one of the most important driving factors behind it. Given the disproportionate impact of high child care costs on women, it is critical to ensure that all parties commit to making affordable child care as central to post pandemic recovery.
ACORN’s Affordable Child Care Platform
- We want child care universally affordable and accessible across the country. The system should enshrine the right of all young children to access regulated, inclusive, culturally safe early learning and child care system.
- Child care fees capped at $10 a day, implemented in all provinces and territories.
- An early childhood education workforce strategy and learning framework to make possible the provision of high quality services and decent work, pay and respect for early childhood educators.
- Sufficient funding to ensure that the facilities remain publicly funded and public child care assets.
- Increased role of governments in ensuring that there is accountability.
- Bridge the gap in shortage of child care centres. Curtail for-profit expansion, publicly plan expansion with explicit targets for creation of new public and non-profit programs.
- Strengthen non-profit’s capacity for expansion.
NDP
- Take immediate action to save not-for-profit child care centres that are at risk of closure with a relief fund to re-open spaces that were lost during COVID-19.
- Immediately work with the provinces to build a universal, $10 a day child care system that’s there for all parents, no matter where you live.
- Create enough spaces so families don’t spend months on wait lists, and ensure that child care workers are paid a fair, living wage.
Liberal
- Reduce fees for child care by 50% in the next year.
- Deliver $10 a day child care within five years or less.
- Build 250,000 new high-quality child care spaces.
- Hire 40,000 more early childhood educators.
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Finalize agreements with all remaining provinces and
Territories. - Work with the province of Quebec to build on its world-class, affordable child care system, improve working conditions for educators, and create more spaces for families.
- Work with Indigenous partners to ensure Indigenous children have access to culturally appropriate, affordable, high-quality early learning and child care.
- Enact federal child care legislation to strengthen and protect a Canada-wide child care system.
Conservatives
Convert the Child Care Expense deduction into a refundable tax credit covering up to 75% of the cost of child care for lower income families.