Zoning important with child care centres

Re Inside the quintessential Toronto neighbourhood fight, Dec. 1 Sandro Contenta’s story illustrates what’s wrong with continuing to regard child care as a private commodity. A neighbourhood may get a child care centre if a money manager looking to invest chooses to open one — or not, if no individual turns up — this is why we have “child care deserts.” Whether this is the right site for the neighbourhood or whether the building is suitable for children are not the primary considerations. Parents need and deserve affordable, quality child care, but where child care is located should be a public planning decision made with local neighbourhood input. That Canada still treats what should be part of our social infrastructure in this way in 2018 is a sad commentary. Martha Friendly, Childcare Resource and Research Unit, Toronto When I first skimmed this article, I had some sympathy for the parents of little ones and the freedom of this man to create a daycare centre. Upon picking up the article later, though, and reading it more closely, I realized that this man, who finds a good fight “mentally stimulating,” is nothing more than a huge troublemaker with an ego to match. If he were working with the government or proposing a not-for-profit daycare with muchneeded spaces available, I might have more sympathy. But eighty toddlers in a residential area? This is nothing more than a money-making selfaggrandizing endeavour designed to upset those neighbours who moved there because of the peaceful and restful tenor of the area. If he wants to provide daycare, do it in a previously zoned area and make your money elsewhere. R. Walton, Guelph