Daycare: our silent crisis

Re High child care costs keep moms at home, Aug. 4 “If you ask me, it’s a crisis.” With those words, Toronto mother Alisa Fulshtinsky summed up the experience of thousands of Canadian parents trying to find and pay for quality child care.

The child-care shortage in Canada is a silent crisis that leaves too many new parents stressed and scrambling, too many children without safe, nurturing places to learn and play and, as the new finance department briefing note points out, this silent crisis leaves too many mothers on the sidelines of the labour market.

Happily, a solution is within our grasp. Ottawa’s promise of a national early learning and child-care framework could be a game changer for families, but only if all levels of government work together. They should be less worried about avoiding “one-sizefits-all” and more interested in creating a strong national program. After all, there are parents in every jurisdiction of the country experiencing the same crisis that Fulshtinsky describes. Carolyn Ferns, Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care

Re Ontario bans ‘unfair’ wait-list fees for daycare spots, Aug. 3 Wait-list fees for child-care spaces are a thing of the past in Ontario. This is surely a victory for the child-care movement; however, it is a small issue relative to the larger problems families face, i.e.: high fees, lack of spaces and questionable quality.

As Sara Ehrhardt said, “We need a system we can all get into for daycare, like a school system.”

I am glad to see that Ontario is moving in the right direction and eliminating wait-list fees is a great start. I hope this shift will continue in early childhood education, and Education Minister Mitzie Hunter will continue to listen to parents and advocates. Shona Mills, Burlington