Ontario daycares cited neglect and abuse

All the more reason to hold the Conservatives accountable for cancelling a REAL universal affordable quality child care strategy and substituting it with an allowance:

A stunning report out this morning may have Toronto parents reconsidering where they leave their kids when they head off to work.

Hundreds of Ontario daycares have been cited for all kinds of neglect and abuse but those complaints are being buried by the province. It more than two years of Freedom of Information requests for the Toronto Star to get its hands on the thousands of complaints.Since 2000, nearly 500 of the province's roughly 4,400 daycares have been handed provisional licenses. Those are granted when daycares operate under substandard conditions. In that time, 13 of the daycare centres have been shut down.

The majority of the problems have surfaced in Toronto but the Star report suggests that may just be because daycare is more tightly regulated in this city.

The source of the problem appears to be funding. Canada recently ranked last among leading industrialzed countries in terms of early childcare funding.

One other important note surfacing from the report is that non-profits seem to fare better thatn the money-making centres.

LINK: AM640
LINK: Toronto Star