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Pauline Marois, the creator of Quebec’s $7 a day child care system, was given an award of honour during an event organized by the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care (OCBCC) to celebrate the 8th annual Child Care Worker and Early Childhood Educator Appreciation Day.
Marois, who is now the leader of the Parti Québécois, was called a social visionary by those speaking at the event including Sid Ryan, President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario.
The family policies that we put in place in the late 1990s were probably the most important decision ever made in Quebec, Marois told a crowd of several hundred who gathered at Toronto’s Ryerson University to honour her and Ontario’s child care workers. It is so irresponsible that other governments will not fund such policies. Child care must be on an equal footing with health, education, infrastructure and the environment.
Marois explained that her government’s initial goal to create 73,000 spaces in five years was easily surpassed because of an avalanche of parent requests and continuing investments by the government to meet the demand. While in power, the Parti Québécois created 203,000 spaces in five years. The current government’s budget allocation is $1.8 billion annually. Now we have a universal child care network managed by parents at affordable prices. Mission accompli!
In celebrating the day, CUPE Ontario President Sid Ryan paid tribute to Ontario’s front line workers. Our child care workers do a fabulous job, day in and day out. They are the workers that parents trust to nurture and educate our children. These are the workers who are helping prepare our children to succeed in our knowledge-based economy.
Ryan added that the provincial government needs to understand that child care is a critical investment that will help sustain Ontario’s economy.
For years, Liberal governments at the Ontario and federal levels have pulled the rug out from under us just when we’ve pushed them to the brink of implementing universal child care. We need more politicians and social visionaries like Pauline Marois to make it happen, said Ryan in his introductory remarks.
At a time when jobs are being lost and parents need to be retrained, it’s really important to have good universal child care, said Ryan. A free and universal child care system has been in place in European countries for decades.
Ryan noted that it is this type of investment that will also create a system in which child care workers and early childhood educators can be paid appropriately for their hard work and dedication. We need a system in which these workers can work with dignity and respect, and retire with a decent pension. Why? Because our children’s futures are in their hands.
