Missing 3-year-old boy found dead in creek in Mississauga, Ont.: police
A three-year-old boy has been found dead a day after he went missing in a park in Mississauga, Ont., Peel police say.
A new report details a lack of child-care spaces is at a crisis level in Canada and why it has worsened.
The report, published in April 2023 by the non-profit Childcare Resources and Research Unit, shows just one spot in a child-care setting was available for 29 per cent of children who need it.
During lockdown orders, the crisis took centre stage for parents who had to take time off work in order to care for their child. However, the issue has persisted for decades, according to Morna Ballantyne, executive director of Child Care Now, an advocacy organization.
"I think one of the things that's driving the shortage of licensed spaces is that child care has been in the news a lot," Ballantyne told CTV's Your Morning on Monday.
Recently, the federal government created a plan in partnership with the provinces and territories to create more than 300,000 new child-care spaces and bring down the fee to $10 a day in the next five years.
"So a lot of parents, families for whom child care was unaffordable in the past, they now see that maybe they could afford it," Ballantyne said. "So they're out there looking and adding their names to waiting lists."
Ballantyne said the crisis is not new, citing her own experience with child care in Canada 39 years ago when she had to add her unborn child to a waitlist.
"Particularly getting access to licensed child care (is a problem)," she said. "Governments for decades now have essentially relied on individuals, organizations, whether they be for profit or not for profit, to set up child-care centres."
Ballantyne says governments need to take action because the problem is "urgent and universal" and won't be solved by a patchwork of smaller organizations.
Another issue of achieving $10-a-day child care and adding enough spaces is employee wages, Ballantyne said. Salaries vary across the country, but nationally they hover around $38,800 a year.
Due to low wages, Ballantyne says, staff are leaving the industry in "droves."
"It is really difficult to retain staff, especially qualified staff, because the wages are so low, and it's not just the wages, but there's very little additional compensation, for example, in the form of benefit plans or pensions," she said.
"If governments move towards creating more spaces…it's going to be very, very difficult to staff them," she said. "Existing centres (and) existing providers are having trouble keeping spaces open because they just can't find staff."
To watch the full interview click the link at the top of this video.
A three-year-old boy has been found dead a day after he went missing in a park in Mississauga, Ont., Peel police say.
Against the rainy Paris night sky, Celine Dion staged the comeback of her career with a powerful performance from the Eiffel Tower to open the Olympic Games.
Premier Danielle Smith said Friday afternoon in Hinton while weather conditions are cooler, the Jasper fire is still considered out of control and that Jasper residents can expect to be away from their homes 'for several weeks.'
An Irish museum will withdraw a waxwork of singer-songwriter Sinéad O'Connor just one day after installing it, following a backlash from her family and the public, it told CNN in a statement on Friday.
A Winnipeg senior is getting soaked with a six-figure water bill.
Nearly two weeks after Donald Trump’s near assassination, the FBI confirmed Friday that it was indeed a bullet that struck the former president’s ear, moving to clear up conflicting accounts about what caused the former U.S. president’s injuries after a gunman opened fire at a Pennsylvania rally.
Orillia OPP arrested and charged a driver with impaired driving after flashing their high beams.
The lawyer for a former judge whose claims to be Cree were questioned in a CBC investigation says his client is not considering legal action against the broadcaster after the Law Society of British Columbia this week backed her claims of Indigenous heritage.
Scotiabank says it has fixed a technical issue that impacted direct deposits on Friday morning.
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Around 100 acres of Manitoba Crown Land near the Saskatchewan border is being returned to the Métis community.
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