On April 19th, 2021, federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced the 2021 federal budget. Included in the budget is a significant investment towards the development of child care programs across the country, including a $30 billion investment over the next five years.
Today’s Family applauds Parliament for placing a high priority on child care across Canada. From our beginning, we have always believed that child care is essential.
It is an economic issue:
Providing accessible and equitable child care is essential to creating a fair and equitable workforce, where parents are free to work and support their families. It allows greater participation in the economy and grants families more agency and control over their lives and finances. It also creates new opportunities for early childhood educators.
It is a social issue:
The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected and disrupted the careers of women, in part because of closing child care programs and schools. This past year has shown just how important child care is – and why significant investment into child care is essential to creating a equitable society that does not expect women to be the default caregivers.
With the costs of child care being uniformly high, child care is often inaccessible for the families that need it most. Investment into child care will result in lower program costs, making it more accessible to all and dismantling some barriers across our society.
It is the backbone of the economy:
When we can all work, the economy is at its best. Investments into child care programs should be seen in the same way as physical infrastructure like roads and bridges: just as our roads and transit help us get to work, so too does child care.
Child care grows economies: according to the CBC, Quebec’s GDP grew by 1.7% after it introduced its provincial child care program. We hope that investments into child care across Canada – including in Hamilton, Halton, Haldimand and Norfolk – will see equivalent growth.
And it creates a generation of young learners:
Early childhood education is just that: education. As we better understand how learning happens, we can also better inspire children to become lifelong learners. We can create environments where collaborative learning happens earlier. Our dream is to instill a curiosity of the world in every child and develop new learning habits that will empower them to succeed in school and beyond.
In short: child care is essential. We are excited to grow along with our government to expand child care programs across Canada, and we are excited to get to work.
