Next Steps for Child Care to Protect the Child Care Workforce
Toronto – October 17, 2022 – Now that all provinces have signed the “Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement” with the federal government, we are finally on the right path toward having Canada-wide affordable early learning and child care in place in every jurisdiction across the country. However, our work does not end here.
The next step is to ensure that affordable child care is enshrined in law and backed by sustainable funding to expand the system. We must ensure that all parents have access to quality, not-for-profit, public child care. We need to call on our governments to build a pan-Canadian child care system that will actually be there to support future generations of families.
Currently, our child care work force is facing unprecedented levels of burnout. The Canadian Child Care Federation and YWCA Canada recently published a policy brief, The Burnout Crisis: A Call to Invest in ECE and Child and Youth Workers, illustrating how much early childhood educators have been impacted by the pandemic, low pay and poor working conditions.
Each day that the wages, benefits, and working conditions of this feminized sector are left unaddressed, more qualified staff are lost, more spaces for families are closed, and early learning and child care becomes less available and less affordable for all families.
Sign our petition to Make Child Care Accessible for all and Protect the Child Care Workforce and add your voice to call on your provincial representatives to address the child care workforce crisis and the need to build a universally accessible and high quality system of early learning and child care.