Freedom Flyer 21

the official newsletter of the
Freedom Party of Ontario

July 1992

This front-page London Free Press coverage captures the negative mood directed at the NDP's "top priority" plans to monopolize a universal daycare system for at least a decade. Given Ontario's high government deficits and eroding tax base, universal daycare in Ontario may be bankrupt before it even starts..

Article electronically reproduced from:

April 4, 1992

Minister gets earful at session

"Is this government going to open not-for-profit children's clothing stores and food stores?" asked a London mother. By PAT CURRIE The London Free Press London mother Cathy Burghardt told an Ontario government panel Friday she is "outraged" by the New Democratic Party government's commitment to a universal non-profit child-care system in Ontario. When a panel that included Community and Social Services Minister Marion Boyd listened, Burghardt scoffed at the NDP's $105-million program to persuade private day-care operators to convert to non-profit status. In an interview, Boyd said the NDP government is "very" dedicated to a universal child-care system propped up by a system of base grants and wage subsidies for workers in non-profit centres. "It's our top priority," she said, adding that she wouldn't guarantee money will be found for it within 10 years. WON'T CREATE SPACE: Speaking at the first of a series of cross-panel consultation meetings on child-care reform, Burghardt said the program wouldn't create a single space for a family needing child care, and at the same time threatened the existence of private operators who now provide almost 30,000 such spaces. She used phrases from the government's own consultation paper as ammunition. "The paper states child care is an essential public service. Well, clothing and feeding children are essential to their well-being. Is this government going to open not-for-profit children's clothing stores and food stores?.... If child care is essential, why isn't this $105 million being spent to ease the demand or create regulated care where it is not available?" OTHER SUBMISSIONS Judith Preston, Toronto, president of the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario (ADCO): "There are about 7,000 employees in 650 private centres that serve 30,000 families in Ontario. This (proposed reform) will destroy our livelihoods ... This government, which likes to say it consults people, made massive decisions before consulting anybody. Ideology reigns supreme. It's ironic to have empty spaces across the province while we have waiting lists. The wait isn't for the space - it's for the assistance." Linda Kadechuk, London Private Home Day Care: Speaking for a non-profit group that included Community Child Home Care of London, Home Child Care Services of Haldimand-Norfolk, and Oxford (County) Community Child Care, Kadechuk welcomed the idea of the base grant and said all four groups want provincial regulations and monitoring that apply to them to apply also to informal care-givers who essentially run babysitling services in their homes. Robert Metz, London, president and leader of the Ontario Freedom Party: "The government proposal stresses quality, affordability, accessibility and sound management ... (To say) government could operate a program on any one of these principles is absurd ... the idea of turning child care into the kind of insupportable monsters the health and education systems have become is laughable... Universality is stupid, wasteful and tragic."

Connie Bontje, Middlesex Community Child Care Development: A modern farm is a dangerous place for children, but many rural families don't have any choice at all except to keep the children at home. They need child care that can take children seasonally and on as little as a day's notice. -Compiled by Pat Currie and Sandra Coulson/London Free Press

e-mail

Page last updated on April 28, 2002