none
Saturday's Editorial: "Last week's provincial budget covered a lot of ground with a harmonized sales tax to boost business and enhanced child benefits and tax credits for low-income families. But the $109 billion budget still didn't manage to meet all the needs of a province seeking to reduce poverty and create jobs.
Affordable daycare, for one, was left out, notwithstanding the fact that it would both reduce poverty and stimulate employment. Expanded daycare would create jobs for child-care workers, enable parents to retrain for better jobs so they can participate in the knowledge economy that Ontario's future depends on, and help single mothers lift their families out of poverty through work.
There was no funding in the budget to maintain the 22,000 daycare spaces slated to close due to expiring federal dollars, let alone to pay for badly needed expansion. The budget simply reiterated the province's call for Ottawa to continue its funding for these spaces.
Yes, Ottawa should pay. But the federal budget has come and gone without the $63 million necessary to keep these spaces open.
What about the 4,000 child-care workers who will lose their jobs if those spaces close? And what of the families who will soon be told their child's daycare space no longer exists? Ontario should fund those spaces until it gets Ottawa back to the table."
To read the full editorial, please click here.