AECEO Submission to House of Commons Standing Committee on Bill C-35, An Act respecting early learning and child care in Canada
Written Submission to:
The House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities regarding Bill C 35, An Act respecting early learning and child care in Canada.
From: Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario, submitted March 17 2023
The Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario (AECEO) is the professional association for Early Childhood Educators (ECEs) in Ontario. We support ECEs in their professional practice and support the recognition and appropriate compensation of the profession. Our members work throughout Ontario in programs for young children and their families, including regulated home and centre-based child care, full-day kindergarten, family resource programs and support services for children with disabilities, among others.
The AECEO has long called for a publicly funded, high quality, universal child care system in Ontario, and across Canada – one that is affordable for all families and that ensures professional pay and decent work for the early childhood workforce. We welcomed the federal government’s commitment in Budget 2021 to build a Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care system, and strongly support a legislative framework that ensures publicly funded, high quality and accessible child care is available to all Canadians for many years to come.
Since 1950, the AECEO has worked to build the collective voice for educators across the province, so they can participate in and influence positive change that benefits ECEs, children, families, and communities. Early Childhood Educators, early years staff and child care providers are the heart of our child care system and are experts at cultivating, co-creating, and advocating for high quality child care programs for young children and families. However, the work of ECEs, a highly racialized and feminized workforce, has historically not been respected, valued or well-remunerated through legislation or child care policy decisions across Canadian jurisdictions. This has resulted in a widespread workforce crisis, in which qualified and experienced ECEs and child care workers are leaving the sector, and graduates of ECE post-secondary programs are not entering the profession due to poor pay and lack of decent working conditions. We call on the federal government to enshrine their support for ECEs and their commitment to decent working conditions for all ECEs and child care staff in Bill C-35 and in ensuing policies.
Read full submission, and AECEO's proposed amendments to Bill C-35 here
Letter to the College of ECE in regard to fees
Please see letter from the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, in partnership with the AECEO, sent to the College of Early Childhood Educators on February 23, 2023.
AECEO Submission to Ontario 2023 Budget Consultations
Registered Early Childhood Educators (RECEs) work in a diverse range of early years settings in Ontario, bringing their knowledge and unique skill set to their pedagogical, caring work with young children, their families and our communities. However, Ontario’s qualified and experienced workforce are leaving the sector, and graduates of ECE post-secondary programs are not entering the profession due to poor pay and lack of decent working conditions. The 2023 Provincial Budget provides an opportunity to build and support a child care and early years system that cares for children, families and the workforce.
Our recommendations:
- Invest an initial $300 million to develop and implement a province-wide Salary Scale for RECEs and child care staff/providers. A minimum wage of $25/hour for all child care workers and $30/hour for RECEs with decent work standards (e.g. benefits, paid planning time, paid sick days) is required to immediately protect and respect the early childhood workforce, and address recruitment and retention issues.
- Increase the general child care allocation by $240 million to $1.92 billion to keep pace with inflation, and meet increased costs that licensed child care is experiencing in daily operation.
- Adopt and implement the child care community’s Roadmap to Universal Child Care in Ontario, which sets out our vision and a shared path forward for Ontario child care.
- Fund 7 permanent paid sick days and additional 14 paid sick days during public health emergencies.
- Reverse cuts to the education budget and allocate funding to lower class sizes, increase wages, ensure paid preparation time and collaborative planning time for the Kindergarten Team, and ensure a healthy and safe work environment.
At the intersection of safety, ethics, mental health, and well-being: Disrupting the status quo, regulatory approach in Ontario
Statement prepared by Brooke Richardson, Adam Davies, and Michelle Jones and supported by the AECEO Board of Directors and staff
Who are we and how are we evolving as an organization?
One of the AECEO’s goals is to build the collective voice of Early Childhood Educators, who we trust to work creatively, collaboratively, and responsively with children, families, and communities. In doing this work, we understand educators, children, families, and communities as inevitably dependent and inextricably interdependent whereby responsive care relations are the foundation of good practice and quality care environments. While our mandate has evolved over time, one focus of our organization today is to critically engage with sociopolitical forces that undermine the work, value, and experiences of ECEs (and allied professionals) and advocate for change at the program, system, and public policy-level. We embrace our work as political, recognizing our responsibility to identify and challenge the chronic undervaluing of ECEs. But we also know we have much to learn. In the past few years, we have prioritized efforts to think with an anti-racist/anti-oppressive lens through ongoing engagement with Black, Indigenous, racialized, and newcomer educators, communities, children, and families. We are also working to establish stronger relationships with LGBTQIA2S communities to ensure we support gender and sexual minority educators, children, and families.
Why this statement?
This statement addresses two concerns. The first is the need to disclose certain mental or physical conditions or disorders on the College of Early Childhood Educator’s renewal form, and the second is the recent partnership between the CECE and People Connect, an online mental health self-assessment tool aimed at ECE’s mental health.
AECEO Sexual Abuse Prevention Program Statement
One of the AECEO’s goals is to build the collective voice of Early Childhood Educators who we trust to work creatively, collaboratively and responsively with children, families, and communities. In doing this work, we understand educators, children, families, and communities as inevitably dependent and inextricably interdependent whereby responsive care relations are the foundation of good practice and quality care environments. While our mandate has evolved over time, one focus of our organization today is to critically engage with sociopolitical forces that undermine the work, value, and experiences of ECEs (and allied professionals) and advocate for change at the program, system and public policy-level. We embrace our work as political, recognizing our responsibility to identify and challenge the chronic undervaluing of (highly gendered) ECEs. But we also know we have much to learn. In the past few years, we have prioritized efforts to think with an anti-racist/anti-oppressive lens through ongoing engagement with Black, Indigenous and newcomer educators, communities, children, and families. We are also working to establish stronger relationships with LGBTQIA2S communities to ensure we support gender and sexual minority educators, children, and families. We are thinking with these communities in voicing our concerns about the mandated SAPP.
Click here to read our statement.
AECEO 2022 Ontario Pre-Budget Submission to the Standing Committee
Our recommendations:
- Immediately sign on to the federal child care plan. If Ontario fails to sign before March 31st we risk losing the first year of funding - over $1 Billion in federal funds.
- Adopt and implement the child care community’s Roadmap to Universal Child Care in Ontario, which sets out our vision and a shared path forward for Ontario child care.
- Invest an initial $375 million to develop and implement a province-wide Wage Grid for RECEs and child care staff/providers. A $25 minimum wage is required to immediately protect and respect the early childhood workforce and address recruitment and retention issues.
- Immediately reverse the 5% administrative funding cut to child care.
- Increase general operating funding by $500 million to stabilize the child care sector.
- Reverse cuts to the education budget and allocate funding to lower class sizes, increase wages, ensure paid preparation time and collaborative planning time for the Kindergarten Team, and ensure a healthy and safe work environment.
- Fund 7 permanent paid sick days and additional 14 paid sick days during public health.
Click HERE to read our full submission.
Roadmap to Universal Child Care in Ontario
In its 2021 budget the Government of Canada announced it was establishing a Canada-wide early learning and child care system and said "The federal government will work with provincial, territorial, and Indigenous partners to build a Canada-wide, community-based system of quality child care."
After thorough consultation with the Child Care and Early Years community, the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care and the Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario developed a Roadmap to Universal Child Care in Ontario - toward our vision of what a Canada-wide child care system can and must be in Ontario. The Roadmap includes 20 key policy interventions to achieving universal child care in Ontario. We know this is the beginning of a journey and we want to continue to hear from you. The Roadmap contains Discussion Questions and a feedback mechanism, as well as an invitation to highlight your program and contribute Policy Briefs as we continue this collective work.
AECEO Submission to Ontario 2021 Pre-Budget Consultation
Our recommendations:
- Invest an initial $375 million to develop and implement a province-wide Wage Grid for RECEs
and child care staff, as a first step to implementing “Growing Together: Ontario's Early Years
and Child Care Workforce Strategy.” A $25 minimum wage is required to immediately protect
and respect the early childhood workforce and address recruitment and retention issues. - Immediately reverse $49 million in planned cuts to child care.
- Increase general operating funding by $500 million to stabilize the child care sector.
- Allocate funding to lower class sizes, ensure paid preparation time and collaborative planning
time for the Kindergarten Team, and ensure a healthy and safe work environment. - Allocate $600 million to begin a transition to operational funding that supports low fees or no
fees for families. - Fund 7 permanent paid sick days and additional 14 paid sick days during public health
emergencies.
Click HERE to read our full submission.
AECEO Submission to Ontario Fall 2020 Budget Consultations
Our child care market system was not working before the pandemic, and it is not working now. This
market system relies on full enrolment, underpaid educators, and exorbitant parent/family fees. Many
child care programs struggle to remain operational, many have yet to reopen, and some are already
closing their doors. At the same time, many RECEs and child care workers are leaving the sector due to
increased risk and responsibility without appropriate pay and working conditions. The COVID-19
pandemic has also thrown families and their finances into disarray. Many families, predominantly
women, are being forced to make impossible decisions about balancing work and their children’s care
needs. This will not improve without intervention.
Click HERE to read the full submission.
AECEO Submission to the Ministry of Education, Child Care and Early Years Act 5-year Review
The AECEOs submission to the 5-year review on the CCEYA was an opportunity to raise the voice of ECEs and address specific areas of concern identified by the profession. We asked AECEO members what opportunities and barriers they are experiencing in practice when thinking about pedagogy, culturally relevant practice and inclusion, and what they would recommend. We heard from you that:
“I would like to see more staff in each room so that every child has the same chance of learning
and the same opportunities that they deserve.” – RECE
“Small adult:child ratios have been a wonderful way to welcome children back to care and
complete all the extra cleaning that is needed … We had participated in so much professional
learning over our 4 months away from the site, these lower ratios are allowing us to put that
theory into practice.” – RECE
“Quality Assessment tools are not culturally-relevant or even locally relevant at times. There is too
much focus on environment rather than focus on relationships educators are building with children.” – RECE
“While we are beginning to have more pedagogical conversations to build educator teams
awareness and understanding of these practices, access to the materials/resources needed to
engage in true experimentation - time, space, physical materials – continues to be a challenge” – RECE
“The most significant barrier to engaging in pedagogical thinking is that there is not enough time
to make this a priority. ECEs must prioritize cleaning, room setup and planning. Engaging in
meaningful consideration of pedagogy is a luxury for which many Educators do not have the time
or support.” - RECE
Alongside our membership consultation, and dialogues with early learning and child care sector partners, the AECEO developed the following recommendation.
We assert that the Ministry of Education must:
• Ensure professional pay and decent work for early childhood educators by enshrining in legislation a provincial wage scale, a mechanism for ongoing consultation with the EC workforce, an Early Childhood Workforce Learning Framework, and enhanced staff:child ratios.
• Rethink quality by embedding relational and ethical understandings of quality into legislation and increasing the required number of qualified staff in ELCC programs.
• Ensure access to culturally relevant pedagogy and programming by legislating recognition and respect for local and cultural knowledge and pedagogy and ensuring appropriate funding and authority to First Nations, Inuit and Metis and Francophone communities and programs.
• Begin to address systemic Anti-Black racism through legislated pre-service and in-service education, anti-racist policies and practice, and a further review of the CCEYA through an Anti-Racist lens as recommended by the Community of Black ECEs.
• Develop a comprehensive, interdisciplinary inclusion strategy that adopts the policy recommendations of the Inclusive Early Childhood Service System Project.
• Implement base-funding to licensed centre-based care and home child care agencies and introduce a moratorium on new for-profit development as a first step towards a universal child care system.
Read the full submission here.