Thread by @AngelaVCarter

Tonight @RegionWaterloo will vote to shut (or protect?) five regional children’s centres. A thread on this.... @Redman4Region @EClarkeYW @tomjgalloway14 @Michaelharrispc @DaveJaworsky @HellieJow @karlkiefer52 @Kathryn_McGarry @Sandy_Shantz @berryonline #Cdnchildcare #childcare

But wait! Didn’t we already do this? Yes, 5 years ago, Council considered closing the centres on the advice of big-business consultant KPMG. But when they heard from the community & independent researchers about the value of these centres, 15 of 16 councillors voted to keep them.

Why are we back here now? Is childcare in Waterloo Region suddenly more accessible? Has demand dropped? Um. No. *Heck no.* And it’s a problem across Canada.
huffingtonpost.ca/entry/daycare-…

Waterloo Region Economic Development Corporation President & CEO Tony LaMantia just last week underscored that our region is “starved” for childcare spots & this is “a very important economic development issue” because it's “a barrier to talent availability.”

La Mantia noted that the lack of childcare was “a limiting factor that could keep people—and women in particular—out of the workforce.” He advises government to prevent the loss of spots, or face “trouble getting back into the game.” Listen @ 49:00 here ⬇️ info.waterlooedc.ca/pim2020

These children’s centres are an essential service for some of the people who have been made most vulnerable by our econ system. The research is unequivocal: the 0-4 years are critical to the social, physical, & intellectual development of children. oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/4d05b610…

We realized *just how essential* they are when covid hit. We needed frontline healthcare workers—paramedics, doctors, nurses—& many of them needed childcare. So the Region re-opened 2 centres for kids ages 12 & under, *24 hours a day, 7 days a week.* kitchener.ctvnews.ca/childcare-prog…

Waterloo was the 2nd region in Ontario to open emergency child care. Our public centres operated for a full month before others re-opened. These ECEs wrote the book on operating safely in a pandemic, then shared those resources with community operators so they could, too.

And now we are living in a “she-cession”: women have suffered most from the economic downturn in great part because if we don’t have childcare, we have to withdraw from the labour market. Economist @ArmineYalnizyan nails it. ⬇️ financialpost.com/opinion/opinio…

BTW, the region’s children’s centres employ 43 full time staff, providing decent, stable jobs predominantly to women trained in early childhood education. Jobs at the centres are used as benchmarks to raise the bar for other women working in childcare.

Now we are on the cusp of major federal support for universal childcare. Finance Minister @cafreeland announced Monday a plan "to provide affordable, accessible and high-quality child care from ocean, to ocean to ocean,” with billions in support coming. budget.gc.ca/fes-eea/2020/r…

What is motivating this federal support? Children’s centres are vital to a just economic recovery after covid—and critically important to families and women. Check out economist @JimboStanford on how public childcare ensures economic viability. centreforfuturework.ca/wp-content/upl…

KPMG is exaggerating the cost savings of cutting the centres and ignoring their benefits—economic and social—to this region. Every dollar in = $$$$ in savings or benefits from children’s development and women’s participation in the labour force.

The cost to the Region of running these 5 centres is minimal, just under $1 million a year—a drop in the bucket in a $1 billion budget. (BTW, the budget for policing is $200 million/yr.)

Could those savings be somehow directed toward creating more high-quality child care spaces in Waterloo Region? This is magical thinking. Instead, we’d likely end up with 200+ *fewer* spaces in a region already desperate for them.

And yet KPMG keeps targeting children’s centres in particular—and creating contracts for itself along the way. Closing centres like these looks like a make-work project for KPMG and we’ve got reasons to be skeptical about what they’re selling. policyfix.ca/2017/11/16/kpm…

KPMG goes from one local government to the next, getting paid to give cut-&-paste recommendations: shut public childcare centres and give (a little) money to parents to buy private care. But… from where? Why are we paying for this narrow-minded advice?

Why is @RegionWaterloo considering shutting down children’s centres when they are needed most (#FeministRecovery!), when we have federal commitments to extend them? Let’s change the conversation to *expanding* our regional children's centres. #SaveWaterlooRegionChildrensCentres

Here’s a petition to urge Council to save the centres, from @ChildCareON. childcareontario.org/waterloo?sp_re…