Status of Women committee  I guess the first thing would have been to approach it with a spirit of humility and an understanding that most of the subject matter expertise wasn't going to reside in government. It wasn't going to reside with academics or economists. It was going to reside with the child care

Status of Women committee  Part of the challenge is the lack of transparency in this program. There's a lack of transparency federally. There's a lack of transparency at some of the provincial levels with respect to how things are rolling out and what's intended versus what's happening. If you think that

Status of Women committee  I think, first of all, we have to understand that the rollout of the program is quite different depending on what province you're in. Each province and territory for the most part had a well-established system of child care before the implementation of the Canada-wide early learn

Status of Women committee  There's a preference in Bill C-35. It was also expressed in the agreements that provinces signed prior to the passage of Bill C-35. All expansion should primarily be in the not-for-profit and public sectors. Right there, when you put a hard cap on the expansion of the sector, wha

Status of Women committee  The one thing I will say is this: Here in Ontario, if we look at independent licensed child care programs and the portion of those run as businesses, most are small businesses that are independently owned and operated by women. Independent licensed child care programs make up bet

Status of Women committee  If there is a plan to fix these kinks, we haven't seen it yet. There's no evidence that there are steps being taken to create that kind of plan. I'd also say there are a lot of smart, dedicated people in Quebec who have invested decades of their lives into trying to deal with th

Status of Women committee  I would say a few things. First of all, there are many licensed child care centres owned and operated by women. In the way the program was implemented.... It was done without a whole lot of consultation and doesn't take into account that there are all of these small businesses.

Status of Women committee  Hi. Thanks for having me here, and thank you for having such a lovely, constructive and good-natured committee. I'm with the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario, which represents independent, licensed child care programs, both commercial and not-for-profit programs. I'v

Human Resources committee  I don't disagree at all with what the previous panellist said. I think that is correct.

Human Resources committee  Are there missing components to the bill? What I would be somewhat concerned about is that we have to be a little careful about inequities, in that there are very lengthy waiting lists. Right now, people who have a space, keep that space. However, we can't create spaces fast enou

Human Resources committee  Yes, it has, actually. I would say that happened when the Province of Ontario rolled out its government-run full-day kindergarten program in public schools—FDK. Prior to that, a lot of Ontario families relied on licensed child care centres to provide kindergarten programming. I

Human Resources committee  I would argue that it's already happening. The data collection and the reporting requirements under the CWELCC program are pretty labour-intensive for child care licensees. I've talked with a lot of licensees about this. The consensus seems to be that at minimum, so far, the CW

Human Resources committee  Thank you, and thanks for the honour of being with you today. I'm Andrea Hannen from the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario, or ADCO. ADCO represents independent licensed child care programs, both commercial and not-for-profit. Most of our member centres are run as