For immediate release

30 March 2007

OTTAWA – Parents, child care workers and advocates joined together on a major Ottawa bridge this morning to protest the biggest child care cut in Canadian history – cut that makes an already bad situation worse for families in the nation’s capital.

“On April 1st Stephen Harper is introducing the biggest child care cut in Canadian history. This is money that Canadians were counting on. So, too, were the provinces. The cut is going to have devastating consequences for parents and children who are already in desperate need of affordable quality child care services,” says Ottawa resident Morna Ballantyne, coordinator of the Code Blue for Child Care campaign.

Advocates rallied on the Portage Bridge to draw attention to a $1 billion dollar cut they say Stephen Harper is trying to hide from Canadians. In last week’s budget, the Conservative government claimed it was investing more than $5 billion in early learning and child care.

“That’s an outright lie,” says Ballantyne. “The only new money allocated for the creation of new child care spaces is a $250 million transfer to the provinces and territories. That’s $1 billion less than what was promised to Canadians in the federal-provincial child care agreements.”

Ottawa parents face an average wait of two years to get a spot in regulated child care. There are 10,000 names on Ottawa’s centralized waiting list. Many families don’t even bother to get on the waiting list because they can’t afford the high fees which run as high as $1,400 a month for infants or toddlers.

“What I and thousands of other parents across this city want is for the federal government to show genuine support for parents working to make ends meet and support our children,” says Donna Aki, Ottawa mother of two boys who are in informal child care arrangements because she can’t afford child care centre fees.

“Harper’s policy of handing over small amounts of money to individual parents instead of investing in a child care system means lower levels of government end up without the resources they need to address community needs,” says Ottawa-based child care advocate Shellie Bird. “Child care in Ottawa is only going to get more expensive as a result of a City of Ottawa decision to limit operating grants to the City’s regulated centres.”

The Ottawa action for child care is one of several taking place today and tomorrow in communities across Canada.

Code Blue is a Canada-wide campaign to build a real pan-Canadian child care system. The campaign brings together parents, national, provincial and territorial child care organizations, labour, women’s and social justice groups along with Canadians from all walks of life. Find out more at Build Childcare.

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For more information, contact:
Morna Ballantyne, Code Blue Coordinator, 613-791-3411