Committee review

[CrazyEight]

"No big deal"???? Are you kidding me???

Maybe in the grand scheme of things, "it will all settle," but tell that to the actual providers and families who's lives are about to get turned upside down.

I live in a working-class, low-income, small city in Ontario. My Arts degree in European Studies and German is completely useless here, but my husband's job is here, so we are stuck. My youngest will already count in my numbers, and we had planned on one more baby sometime next fall. If I continue that plan and refuse to let my government dictate my family size, then I will have to terminate 2 clients. I will be forced to run on 60% of my barely-minimum-wage-already income for 3 more years. My business will essentially be in the toilet. I will be working 10 hour days for under 20 grand a year. However, daycare costs, even just for my existing three children, would be that amount themselves. So to be better off, I need to walk into an entry-level job that offers straight day shifts and pays at least 40 grand a year. Please, tell me where I'm supposed to find that. I don't have "other options" available to me. This was a career born out of necessity.

I am ONE example of thousands and thousands of providers across this province. My clients have nowhere else to go in this school district. They cannot afford higher fees. They are a few examples of an even bigger number of families that will be affected.

To say nothing of rural Ontario, where there are very few centers and in a lot of places, no agencies either. They rely on ICP's almost exclusively, and now ICP's are about to be forced to terminate spaces.

Rachael, how can you be so nonchalant in saying that people with multiple young children "simply won't decide to open their own business, they will have one less option"?? Exactly how many other options do you think there are?

I realize you think that the laws here were unfair to begin with, and I realize that providers in other provinces have figured out a way to make ends meet with harsher restrictions. But that is not the point. Regardless on whether or not they were right or fair or whatever other word you want to use, Ontario has been running with these ratios for decades. Providers, myself included, have planned our families around the current laws. Thousands of providers have bought large homes with separate daycare spaces, for example, have planned the number and spacing of their children, have made huge, life-altering decisions based on the CURRENT ratios, and now are faced with trying to figure out how to fix the damage that has already been done. They can't magically go back in time and have less kids or space them further apart. They can't just pick up and move to a city with more job opportunities. They can't go back in time and decide NOT to buy that bigger house, NOT to spend money on renovations for daycare, NOT to upgrade their schooling with ECE courses, etc etc etc. Those choices were made years ago based on the current ratios, and the damage from them has already been done.

These are people's livelihoods at stake, that the government has thrown away. I'll be damned if I'm going to sit back and allow a bunch of corrupt politicians throw my career under the bus in order to cover their own asses, and do nothing about it. I'm going to fight for all the providers and families that will run out of options after this law goes through, because then I can at least look myself in the eye in the morning.

Please keep the actual people that this will hurt in mind before simply brushing off such monumental changes in legislation as no big deal. Change is only good if it is going to improve the lives of everyone it affects, and this will only improve the pocketbooks of agencies and the government.