The NDP has a number of fundamental beliefs about childcare.

It also has a solid plan for addressing the needs of children, parents, early childhood educators, and other members of the childcare community. That means making childcare more affordable for parents, investing heavily in childcare subsidies so that childcare programs can continue to operate, and protecting valuable childcare spaces in our communities.

Childcare is a necessity, not a luxury, and it's time we started treating it as such.

The percentage of two-parent families with both parents in the paid labour market grew from 25% in 1971 to 78% in 2006. Over the course of a single generation, it became increasingly necessary to have two adults in the paid labour market in order to pay the family's bills.

Childcare is an investment – in the economy and in the next generation. It's also an investment that reaps tremendous dividends for our entire society.

Investing in childcare allows parents to go to work. Their work fuels the economy.

Children benefit from early learning programs. And children who might not otherwise have the same opportunities to have access to reading materials or even to be read to by an adult on a regular basis benefit hugely from early learning programs. And we all benefit from what they learn. These children aren't already miles behind their peers by the time they start kindergarten and at risk of learning and behavioural problems. They have a better start in life.

Did you know that the rate of return on each childcare dollar invested has been estimated to be anywhere from $2 (according to Canadian research) to $3 to $17 (according to US research).

This is where the NDP's Plan to invest $125 million in childcare in each of the next two years – a quarter-billion dollars in total - fits in.

The transition to full-day kindergarten is a good thing.

Three-, four-, and five-year olds are beginning to benefit from a full-day program that has been designed just for them.

However, the transition to full-day kindergarten has not been without its challenges – challenges that have not been adequately dealt with by the current government, which has allowed other parts of the childcare system to fall into crisis.

• Childcare programs for younger children are becoming financially non-viable in the wake of new early learning programs for four- and five- year olds.  They are having to shut their doors
• Childcare is becoming unaffordable. Childcare already costs between $40 and $60 per day and parents are being faced with child care fee increases of 15 to 30 percent.
• Low income families are shut out of the high-quality childcare system entirely, unless they can obtain subsidies, which are very scarce. This is an issue of social justice. Early childhood education can help to ameliorate some of the disadvantages of poverty by helping children from very low income families.
• There isn't enough childcare. Four out of five Ontario children do not have access to a licensed child care space.
• Childcare centres can't afford to pay staff what they are worth without government funding to support wages and benefits. In a high quality program, 80 percent of the centre budget goes toward staffing costs.
• Providing quality care requires low caregiver-child ratios based on age and, in Ontario, we have caregiver-child ratios we can be proud of. What we can't be proud of is asking caregivers to work for wages that don't allow them to support their own families.
• Childcare programs have been waiting for 15 years for an adjustment in funding to account for inflation. That means that childcare staff, children, and parents have been watching program dollars shrink during consecutive Conservative and Liberal governments.

What we have on our hands right now is a childcare crisis that is only going to get worse unless there is a significant change of course.

The NDP has a plan that will pay off for everybody – children, parents, early childhood educators, and the community as a whole. Because when parents are able to go to work and children thrive, everyone is richer, financially and in even more important ways that can't be measured on a spreadsheet. Thank you.

Any new job comes with a few surprises. But many first-year teachers who land jobs are shocked to discover just how much of their own money they need to spend on basic supplies.

"I spent over $2100 my first year, on things like resource books, books for my kids to read, decorative stuff for the classroom, supplies like post-its, kleenex, markers, dry erase boards, literacy and math centre materials, science materials, art supplies, music materials, and other day to day things you need," recalls local teacher Bridget Lee.

Lee was also surprised to discover that, while schools are allowed to fundraise for school trips and playground equipment, they aren't allowed to go out into the community to raise money for textbooks or reading materials that may be desperately needed in the classroom.

What we have right now is a partially-funded public school system -- a system in which there are have- and have-not schools and some kids simply have to do without. 

We believe Peterborough kids (and Peterborough teachers) deserve a whole lot more.

Related:

People for Education: Your Schools, Your Vote: Education in the Provincial Election

With just 5 in 8 jobs in the province being full-time, permanent positions, citizens of Ontario need to decide how much longer they are willing to settle for the status quo.

Do we want an Ontario that offers full-time permanent jobs with good benefits—or are we willing to settle for an Ontario where part-time, temporary jobs are the norm?

That’s the question we should be asking ourselves this Labour Day, particularly given that many of our friends and neighbours are walking the picket line at Fleming College, trying to defend quality jobs in our community, says Dave Nickle, provincial NDP candidate for Peterborough Riding.

“It’s ironic that the community colleges are trying to create the very types of jobs that community college graduates can’t afford to take—not if they want to pay off their student debts or to be able to afford to have families some day.”

Nickle spent time on the Fleming picket line both Thursday and Friday, supporting members of OPSEU Local 315.

“Fleming College support staff are on strike because they want there to continue to be decent full-time, permanent jobs for people living in Peterborough—the types of jobs that allow students to pay their way through school and aging workers to retire with dignity. If these quality full-time jobs with benefits and pensions are allowed to disappear from our community today, they won’t be here to sustain members of the next generation. And our entire community will be poorer as a result.”

The Ontario government needs to take action to protect quality jobs in this province, says Nickle. “It’s time that the Ontario government stood up and said that people in this province deserve a secure future. An NDP government would defend and create the full-time, family-sustaining jobs Peterborough deserves.”

A fresh approach to job protection and job creation is long overdue, he adds: “Despite 30 years of business-friendly policies in this province, big business has failed to deliver the broad-based prosperity it promised. An NDP government would reward the job-creators—small business—for helping to create the family-sustaining jobs our communities need.

Wilfred Laurier University professor Edmund Pries recently explained the political machinations that are involved in convincing people to vote for the political parties who work against their best interests in an article that appeared in The Toronto Star last Friday. He describes how a friend of his -- a professor of American history -- was flabbergasted to witness the deliberations of a Washington think-tank that provided advice to the Republican Party during the Reagan era. The think-tank was recommending increasing the debt and the deficit -- a stark contrast to the Republican Party's image as the party of fiscal restraint. "Our goal is to grow the deficit as much as possible in order to create political space to eliminate government-funded programming," he was told. "Until then, we want high deficits while lobbying for a balanced budget -- and promoting social program cuts as the only solution."

Pries continues: "To create this useful deficit, tax cuts to wealthy individuals and corporate sectors would be drastically increased, especially to the banking, energy and military segments. In short, one would implement a transfer of the state's revenue supply obligations from the wealthiest to the poor and middle classes in order to permit an even greater transfer of wealth from the middle classes to the rich thereafter. The only trick was to convince the poor and middle classes to 'buy in' via a mixture of patriotism and structural necessity so that they would vote in favour of cutting the very programs that benefitted them."

So ask yourself this before you head into the voting booth on October 6th: Who really stands to gain from and who really stands to lose from what is being offered by the various political parties? Then cast your vote, bearing in mind what Pries says: "We all are better served when we build a society together where all can benefit through the buiding of community-wide programs."