Just in time for Mother's Day! From Windsor, to Waterloo, to Wawa, child care can’t wait! Ontario parents, ECEs and social justice advocates are launching a new petition and campaign calling for a universal, quality child care system.

Campaigning works! Recently after months of organizing and advocacy work, the child care community won a small victory in ensuring that the Ministry of Education back away from their proposed regulation changes to age ranges ratios and group sizes. We could not have done this without all of your signatures, voices and actions! Now that we’ve told the government what we don’t want, let’s tell them about the change we do want to see: a real child care system for Ontario!

Petition for a Universal, High Quality Child Care System in Ontario

• Petition in PDF (addressed to OCBCC office)
• Petition in PDF (addressed to Windsor organizers)
• Petition in PDF (no address and logo-free for you to organize locally)

Please share it with your community and help us collect as many signatures as we can from across the province. Our goal is 10,000. Here are some simple ways you can get involved:

• Print the petition and post it in your staff room. Encourage colleagues and community to sign and to take this around in their neighbourhoods!
• Print it and attach it to your attendance sheet. You can ask parents if they would like to sign it during drop-off or pick-up.
• Take the petition to local events in your community, wherever folks are gathered.
• Use social media to start a conversation about child care and encourage people to print, sign and share.
• Remember: Petitions to the Ontario legislature are print-only, so be sure to print, sign and mail your completed petitions to the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care or to one of the local organizing centres.

Supported by both the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care and CUPE Ontario, the petition calls on the province to work towards a clear goal of developing a universal early childhood education and child care system. It also calls on the government to publicly declare Ontario’s commitment to take leadership with the federal government in developing a national child care plan that adopts the principles of universality and high quality. The OCBCC has also sent a statement to all Ontario MPPs calling on them to do the right thing for Ontario’s children and families.