Government gets low grade for child care
The Daily News (Nanaimo) - Canwest News Service
June 13, 2008 
By: Amy Husser

The federal government is failing the country by not providing working parents with more access to affordable and quality child care, a national labour union says.

The Canadian Labour Congress gave Ottawa and the provinces poor marks for their delivery of child care in a series of "report cards" released Thursday.

The critiques were delivered just as another national group put forward its own report, arguing that the job of providing child care should be taken out of the federal government's hands all together.

The Canadian Labour Congress, which represents 3.2 million workers, released its report cards for nearly all of the Canadian provinces and territories, grading their child-care delivery….

"Since the Conservatives . . . took power in 2006, things haven't improved," union executive vice-president Barbara Byers said in a statement. "Working women continue to face a surplus of promises and a shortage of results."

The poor review came more than two years after Stephen Harper's government came to power and cancelled a Liberal plan for a national child-care program.

The union said more spaces are needed because 75% of Canadian mothers with preschool-age children are in the paid workforce, but only 16% of children had access to regular child care in 2004.

For each of the report cards, the union noted the province or territory could do more with greater federal leadership and financing.

"Provincial governments could do so much more if the federal government was there with stable, predictable funding and support," said Byers.

"They aren't getting the job done for working parents. Fees are going up. New spaces are being created at a much slower pace than before. Wages for child-care workers continue to range from fair to far too low."

But the Institute of Family and Marriage Canada, which also released a report on child-care policy in their spring and summer review, argues the opposite -- that providing child care should be taken out of the hands of the federal government….

….Child-care providers across the country have continued to ask for more funding and support. Waiting lists exist for the majority of service providers.