Canada STILL needs child care - Federal election 2008
October 2008

Federal Budget 2008: Child Care Loses the Game of Fiscal Choices Again
February 2008

Article: Politicians hold key to children's futures
January 21, 2008; Peter Ehrlich, The Toronto Star

Advocates urge premiers to fight for child care
January 2008

Code Blue open letter to the provincial and territorial premiers urging them to press Prime Minister Stephen Harper to use the federal spending power to expand early childhood education and child care services.
Media release
Letter to Premiers

Related article:

Eliminating poverty makes economic sense
Jan 11, 2008
TORONTO STAR
BY: Ann Decter, co-ordinator of Campaign 2000

When Canada's First Ministers meet over dinner tonight in Ottawa ...any meeting focused on the economy and labour force requirements should take a hard look at the statistic that almost 12 per cent of Canadians under 18 are living in poverty. Meeting labour force requirements will mean ensuring all Canadian youth are prepared for the working world, and none are left behind with inadequate skills.

Contrary to popular belief, reducing poverty is good for economies, as is maintaining a strong social safety net to prevent poverty. Denmark, Sweden and Finland are three of the five most economically competitive nations in the world. They have the lowest child poverty rates and strong social safety nets.

Poverty is expensive. Just as it is much more costly to treat a disease than prevent one, it costs more to provide emergency hostels than affordable housing, more to take a child into the care of child welfare agencies than to make sure families have adequate incomes and more to cope with school dropouts than to train our youth for the jobs Canada needs to fill in the coming years….

Polls continue to show that most Canadians believe concrete government action can drastically reduce poverty, and poverty reduction now has momentum across Canada. Quebec's 2004 action plan has given that province a nation-leading decline in child poverty rates. Quebec has far and away the best child-care program in the country, a key component of poverty reduction strategies internationally.

Conservative Premier Danny Williams has followed a 2006 promise to make poverty rates in Newfoundland and Labrador the lowest in the country with an ambitious and well-funded plan. The Ontario Liberal government is currently developing targets and measures. Nova Scotia has appointed an inter-ministerial and inter-sectoral working group to recommend a strategy. Manitoba's NDP government recently raised the minimum wage, also key to poverty reduction.

The time is right for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to outline a clear, national poverty reduction strategy with targets and timetables. As the U.K. has shown, setting realistic targets for poverty reduction puts progress within reach. In 1999, Tony Blair set a target of 25 per cent poverty reduction in five years and opened the door to impressive gains.

Canada should follow suit by setting minimum targets of a 25 per cent reduction in the child poverty rate over the next five years, and a 50 per cent reduction over 10 years.

How do we get there?

The cornerstone would be to ensure everyone working full-time, year-round does not live in poverty. This alone would achieve the minimum 25 per cent reduction in five years, because 40 per cent of all children in poverty live in families where a parent has worked full-time all year.

The real opportunity tonight lies concerted action. Achieving poverty reduction goals will require a co-ordinated strategy between the federal and provincial governments.

At the federal level, the strategy should include increases to the Canada Child Tax Benefit, an expansion of the Working Income Tax Benefit, and major federal investments in early learning and child care and social housing. Employment Insurance needs expansion and is an easy win. This self-funded program maintains a large surplus while covering less than 40 per cent of unemployed Canadians.

Provinces will have to do their part by raising and indexing minimum wages to a poverty reduction standard of $10 an hour, raising and indexing welfare rates and investing provincial revenues in affordable housing initiatives, extended drug and dental coverage, and early learning and child-care programs.

Federal savings from lower debt charges can finance a national strategy. Those who have argued that high levels of public debt are a burden for future generations of children should now delight that the savings can be invested in the next generation of children. …Simply put, Canada can afford to include everyone in prosperity….

Proclamation against spread of “big box” child care
November 2007

We will do everything in our power to:

1. Prevent the foreign take over of Canadian child care centres;
2. Persuade federal MPs of all parties to support the passage of Bill C303, an
   early learning and child care act;
3. Convince provincial governments to change regulations/legislation to prevent offshore companies from opening child care centres in Canada;
4. Join with Code Blue for Child Care to oppose ABC/123 child care in Canada.

Code Blue’s visual petition
June 2007
Code Blue is gathering messages through an online visual petition. The messages will be shared with politicians of all levels and stripes, showing them how deeply Canadians care about and need a cross-Canada system of early learning and care.

May is Child Care Month and we are taking Advocacy on the road
May 2007

The Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC, the BC Government and Services Employees’ Union and the national Code Blue for Child Care Campaign, our national advocacy partners, are reclaiming Child Care Month with a tour of BC communities.

Child Care Month is the time to say that:

• child care advocacy in BC is alive and well;
• communities are standing together for child care like never before; and
• child care will be an issue in every federal riding in BC in the next election.

Join Child Care Let’s Make it Happen Tour Events in Victoria, Duncan, Vernon, Castlegar, Prince Rupert, and Richmond (click on the city name to see the event poster).

Download the itinerary of the whole tour (PDF)

CODE BLUE: Give the Early Learning and Child Care Act a push
April 2007

Bill C303 passed second reading in the House of Commons with the support of all three opposition parties. And now the bill is going to a House of Commons Standing Committee for review. If all three federal opposition parties continue to support this important legislation, the Bill will move forward to the House of Commons for final consideration.

Early Learning and Child Care: What's Needed
March 2007

It's time to embrace a compelling vision for the future of early learning and child care. Code Blue for Child Care is putting forward a program that can excite parents' imagination and serve children's interests.

CODE BLUE: Budget message on child care: let parents eat cake
OTTAWA, March 19 /CNW Telbec/

The federal budget is a slap in the face to the millions of Canadian families desperately seeking child care, says CodeBlue for Child Care.

"The Harper government is cutting $1.2 billion in federal funding for child care and instead is handing over only $250 million to the provinces and territories to create spaces," says Morna Ballantyne, Code Blue Coordinator.

"The Conservatives have taken away any hope and opportunity for creating the system of early learning and child care that Canadians say they want."

Contrary to pre-budget speculation, the Conservative government has not abandoned its plan to give tax breaks to businesses for child care.

"Instead, they have abandoned parents," says Ballantyne. "It is a smoke and mirrors tactic though because they know there will be almost no uptake from businesses and the plan will cost them nothing and give us nothing."

Canadians have said time and time again they want the federal government to deliver equitable and quality services but Budget 2007 is almost entirely transfers to individuals and businesses in the form of tax credits, and to provinces and territories in the form of arrangements with no strings attached.

"It's a bad budget," says Ballantyne. "It should not be supported."

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Code Blue: Opposition asked to act against $1 billion cut in child care funding

Canadians are counting on the federal opposition parties to speak out against the $1 billion cut in federal funding for child care that Finance Minister Flaherty will make when he tables the federal budget onMarch 19th.

Full article

Report Card Release
Monday, February 5, 2007

Ottawa CODE BLUE is launching a cross-Canada online mobilization with the release of a report card on the Harper Government¹s performance on child care. A year after they took office, the Conservatives have failed early learning and child care, and Canada¹s families and children.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

We urge you to sign the report card at http://www.buildchildcare.ca

Be sure to check out other ways you can participate!

Premiers' Meeting - Council of the Federation
February 7, 10:30 a.m., Fairmount Royal York Hotel, Toronto

The premiers are meeting to discuss the fiscal imbalance and we want to take the message to them that early learning and child care should be at the top of their agenda.

Code Blue will gather with a group of about 20 people, including children and parents to present the premiers with an open letter (which will be posted on the website the same day along with the media release) and cards made by the children.

The letter urges the premiers to:

1. Pressure the federal government to restore $1.2 billion in dedicated child care transfer payments in the upcoming 2007/08 federal budget.

2. Use provincial/territorial dollars to fund their provincial/territorial child care system so that children, families and communities don¹t pay the price for the federal government¹s unilateral actions.

3. Make a long-term commitment to build comprehensive early learning and child care systems in their jurisdictions ­ with provincial/territorial and federal dollars.

4. Work together to ensure that Canada¹s children receive the best possible early start that we can give them.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

You can help send a message to the premiers that we want them to fight for early learning and child care. Contact your premier¹s office to urge him to come out of the meeting at 10:30 for a photo opportunity with a small gathering that has a message of support for child care.

Code Blue for Child Care Winter Bulletin
Winter 2006

Winter Bulletin [PDF]

What’s Wrong with the federal Child Care Spaces Initiative?
September 2006