Not in favour of the strike option because we have no union to then back us up. One day is just going to annoy people not solve anything. It will actually give the government more fuel for the plan to do away with us annoying people in favour of provincially run daycare centres - that would have more job security in the sense of stays open with administrators if teachers strike in some cases. We could actually be hurting ourselves by taking this step.

One of the things I posted on the facebook site and yes if you aren't a member now is a good time to become one is that while I agree that the rules should be the same for private and agency why not change the agency rules to be more like us instead - or more likely something more in the middle. There are no hard and fast rules if you look around the country on what the age mix should be. Also the age mix is as old as the DNA meaning it was done prior to the one year mat leave and no longer reflects the fact kids don't enter care as babies that need bottles and rocking, etc. Just as the age mix needing daycare has changed so should the age mix allowed in a daycare home private or agency.

Of course the other thing to argue for is the disbanding of the agency system itself and make ALL caregivers private. Then use the agency trained personal to be support/inspectors for home daycares which is something we would have to agree to.

There are compromises we can make and instead of just being against everything we need to take a positive approach so we do stand a chance of getting an audience with whoever will be the minister of education for each party to present our proposal. Even if we don't get all of what is in it realize those reading it have no idea of what our job entails so it is also a way to educate them. Ideally they will ask why we think it should be one way compared to the way the old way was.

There was a website started against bill 143. That could totally be revamped now to be "instead of bill 143 Ontario toddlers need".