Four National Women's Groups: CCLOW . CFWEC . CRIA W . NOIVMWC

3. Childcare

Every parent and child has the right to universally accessible, comprehensive, high quality, not-for-profit, accountable child care. The Green Paper falls short of this and fails to provide a national policy framework to guide the development of services in a coordinated and responsible manner.

A 1992 Statistics Canada study reported that the lack of adequate and affordable child care was the greatest impediment to employment outside the home for low-income and moderate-income families with children. This was also found to be the number one barrier to self-reliance among single parents.

Currently, over three million children need access to quality child care in Canada, and only 371,000 regulated child care spaces are available to Canadian families. For those families unable to access these spaces, the alternatives are alarming: illegal settings, unregulated family day homes or commercial child care programs.

The government's offer to create 150,000 new child care spaces and invest $720 million new federal dollars falls drastically short of what is needed to adequately address child and family poverty and unemployment.

For lone-parent mothers and their children, this lack of affordable, quality child care often means remaining trapped in a cycle of poverty and unemployment. Women of colour and First Nations women who head single parent families are among the most severely affected. Already inhibited by systemic discrimination which exacerbates their disadvantaged labour market position, these women are at great risk of living in poverty with their children. We see a very similar pattern among women with a disabilities.

For those in rural and remote communities, including farm and fishing women, the situation is made more difficult by a child care system designed for urban settings. Licensed spaces are rarely located close to home, and childcare provided by nearby family or neighbours is often not eligible for the established system of subsidies or deductions. Rural women are thus left with three unattractive options: travel long distances to leave their children with caregivers, pay for nearby childcare that the system will not recognize, or care for the children at home. This last option raises major concerns for farm women, because their home is their worksite, and it is a dangerous worksite for children. Injuries to farm children who must stay at home because appropriate childcare is not available is a critical issue which farm women have repeatedly raised.

Currently, parents' private expenditures form the largest portion of Canadian expenditures on child care, as much as 85% in some regions of the country.

Recommendations

25. Ensure child care is universally accessible in Canada by the year 2005.

26. In consultation with the provinces, territories and aboriginal communities, develop a Child Care Action Plan, based on a set of principles, framed by fiscal and social policies which accommodate diverse regional circumstances, and bound by targets and a timetable.

27. Develop a national program that is responsive to the special needs of rural and remote women, women and children with disabilities, and which is culturally appropriate for women and children of colour, Aboriginal women and children, immigrants and refugees.