Child Care Advocates from Across Canada Meet in Ottawa

On November 19, Child Care Now, the Canadian Child Care Federation and the Childcare Resource and Research Unit brought key representatives of the child care sector from across Canada together in Ottawa.

The more than 40 representatives, made up of provincial and national child care advocacy organizations and child care policy experts, came together to review the provincial,

territorial and federal ECEC policy developments since the signing of the Multilateral Framework Agreement on Early Learning and Child Care, the subsequence bilateral agreements and the Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care Framework Agreement. They also sought to prepare for the next round of negotiations to ensure that the next bilateral agreements bring us closer to the vision for ECEC in Canada established in the Shared Framework.

The group worked together to address the current political situation in Canada in regard to child care and identified opportunities to make policy advances, especially in the lead up to the next federal election.

“As advocates, we need to understand the issues facing parents and educators at the provincial and territorial level as well as federally,” explained Morna Ballantyne, Executive Director of Child Care Now, “meetings such as this one provide a chance to examine the work that still needs to be done at all levels and identify the upcoming opportunities to get child care policies into place that will benefit Canadian families.”