This letter was sent to Ontario’s Minister of Finance and President of the Treasury Board of the Government of Ontario on Friday February 5, 2021.

It states four immediate and meaningful actions that the provincial government can take to move forward on Early Learning and Child Care, avoid further macroeconomic damage from this crisis, and maximize growth:

• Build on the Canada-Ontario bilateral agreement from 2017 to secure quality, accessible, affordable, inclusive ELCC, addressing bilateral weaknesses that exclude funding for school-operated ELCC and workforce compensation.
• Recognize and support the role of qualified educators in security children’s safety, well-being and healthy development, by increasing pathways to training for all caregivers working in licensed programs.
• Increase required staffing ratio with qualified early childhood educators, and tie compensation to staff qualifications.
• Reduce class sizes.

The letter also offers cautions about three other ways to proceed that may be attractive to this government given their previous approaches, through vouchers, deregulation and resisting conditional federal funding.

The letter was written by Armine Yalnizyan, Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers. Any errors are the authors’ own.