Update from our Annual Report

Childcare Task Force Report in PIA's 2010-2011 Annual Report

Click here for the Childcare Task Force report in PDF

Click here to access our full annual reports

Plain text of the Childcare Task Force Report:

Early childhood education and care is one of the most important public service we could be providing to support young children and their families in those most crucial early years. Yet, our provincial government sees childcare primarily as a market commodity rather than a vital public service. This past year, our task force continued to be the primary advocates for quality early childhood education and care in the province. When a private Edmonton area childcare was shut down for serious issues of quality, PIA was extensively in the news challenging the government to improve our childcare quality standards and the voluntary accreditation program.

PIA also challenged the provincial government on its market approach to developing new childcare spaces. Instead of really supporting a planned approach to increasing more quality childcare programs in under-served areas, space creating funding was provided to any business or not-for profit centre that wanted to expand. While this did create some much needed spaces which was so desperately needed from years of underfunding, the funding could have been used in a much more targeted away. We further challenged the Alberta government in the media when they announced they were ending the space creation program, even though the federal government continues to provide over $25 million a year to the province for childcare space creation.

Our most recent advocacy success was our work to advocate that Edmonton Public Schools not to allow EDLEUN, the largest childcare corporation in Canada, to lease space in four public schools. We raised many concerns and questions about the implications of having a publicly traded corporation renting space inside a public school system, and were very pleased when the vast majority of school board trustees agreed not to allow this to happen. This advocacy work will continue to be one of the central focuses of the task force, as this corporation has very aggressive plans for rapid expansion across Alberta and Canada.

Also available: Last year's (2009-2010) Task Force Report in PDF