Finance committee  Yes. I think that's exactly right. When we lost, here in Ontario, all of the independent licensed child care centres, 1,200 of them, during the rollout of the full-day kindergarten program, originally those licensed child care centres.... They mostly also provided full-day kindergarten.

Finance committee  Yes. I think that experience actually is echoed in a number of jurisdictions across the country. We did a research study on that a number of years ago. In areas where there has been the most intervention into the child care market, such as provinces that have tried to eliminate anything but a public sector and not-for-profit sector system, that's where access to licensed child care tends to be lowest.

Finance committee  I think actually that if child care is more affordable for families, more families will be able to access it, certainly. However, the question is how you make child care more affordable for families. I believe that making child care more affordable for families comes from giving families more money, letting them keep more of the money they earn in their own pockets and supporting their choices.

Finance committee  First of all, we've seen parental choice limited in Ontario through the full-day kindergarten program, so we have some experience with this. Prior to the introduction of the full-day kindergarten program in the schools, a lot of the full-day kindergarten programming was provided by independent licensed child care centres.

Finance committee  No. Depending on the approach the federal government took, many of those small businesses would close. I guess what is really disturbing from the parental standpoint is that not only would their existing child care arrangements be disrupted, those options will be gone forever.

Finance committee  Yes—

Finance committee  Yes, absolutely. I think it's really important that parents be in the driver's seat when it comes to child care choices. Not every parent is going to need a full-time, licensed child care space that runs during the regular work day, 9 to 5 or 8:30 to 4:30 during the week. Lots of parents have more flexible employment than that.

Finance committee  Yes. That's absolutely right. I think the number one consideration is that we have to preserve parental choice.

Finance committee  Yes. I believe so. Certainly, what we've seen when there's been government intervention, picking winners and losers in terms of what parts of the sector they want to expand to create spaces, is that it has invariably resulted in fewer spaces overall. If you fund families, and families want licensed child care, licensed child care owner-operators and not-for-profits that provide licensed child care are very quick to respond to community needs.

Finance committee  I think all provinces have some strengths and some weaknesses. It depends a lot of times on which government is in power at the provincial level. I think the big weakness we see is when any government tries to pick winners and losers. If you try to direct expansion only in the public sector, well, then you invariably lose centres in the independent licensed sector, whether they're commercial or not-for-profit.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning to everybody. Thanks for inviting the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario to make a presentation to the committee. We appreciate the work you are doing to study this bill. ADCO was founded in 1981 and is the industry association for Ontario’s independent licensed child care centres, both commercial and not for profit.