That funding split won't help us because entrepreneurs don't start day cares.
More spaces for skills training and money for child care worker training are positive measures, but better training doesn't fix worker retention and recruitment problems, not to mention all the other labour challenges. Even at that, the approach is still far too limited in scope.
In addition, we find it odd that we weren't consulted. Why should 33% of the funding go to support entrepreneurs and 66% be allocated to training?
That isn't what we need. What we really need is a small team to help build community capacity in order to increase the number of community-based day cares and support their start-up, in co-operation with parents. What we'd like to know is how this $20 million is going to help us.
The other thing that ties into all this, and Mr. Choquette brought it up, is that things are still stalled. We just found out about the percentages, and we still haven't received the additional funding allocated to early childhood education programs and implementation. The information is trickling in, but we'd like things to move more quickly because the need is great and the early childhood years don't last forever. We really have to do something now.