On Thursday, about 180 child-care operators gathered on Parliament Hill to call attention to problems with Ottawa’s subsidized child-care program.
While that program is national in scope, each province administers it differently.
Ontario operators attended the protest with a particular set of concerns: the province has announced funding model changes that have left thousands of operators wondering whether they should remain in the subsidized program at all.
The province has also announced it is withdrawing subsidies — including subsidies for low-income families — for child-care centres that do not participate in the nationally subsidized program.
Ontario’s new funding model is “going to have a massive impact on the children and families that they serve,” said Krystal Churcher, chair of the Association of Alberta Childcare Entrepreneurs, an advocacy organization that helped organize the protest.
New model
Ontario joined Ottawa’s subsidized child-care program in 2022. Initially, the province funded participating operators using a “revenue replacement” model — an approach that saw operators receive subsidies equivalent to the lost revenue from decreased parental child-care fees.
The problem with this approach, operators have said, is that it froze operators’ revenue at 2022 levels. Meanwhile, operators’ costs have increased significantly since 2022.
In response to mounting criticism, the province in August announced a new funding model that will fund operators based on various cost-related factors, including operators’ location, the number of children they serve and the children’s ages.
Ontario says roughly half of operators will have all of their costs covered under this funding model. And those whose expenses exceed the funding will be eligible to receive a “legacy top-up.”
But it remains unclear how much this legacy top-up will cover, says Zoe Prassoulis, owner of a child-care centre in Vaughan.
“Legacy funding is not guaranteed,” she said. Just because the funding is available “doesn’t mean that I’m gonna get approved for legacy funding.”
While the funding changes are scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, many operators still do not know how much funding they would receive under the new model, says Debbie Cunha, owner of the Little Kids Daycare Centre in Oakville.
At Thursday’s protest, many operators told Canadian Affairs they had just received — or have still not received — an updated funding estimate from Ontario municipalities, which are responsible for setting program funding rates.
Yet, Ontario child-care operators only have until next Friday, Nov. 1, to decide whether they want to participate in the new funding model, says Cunha.
“I received my regional funding calculator on Friday, [Oct. 18,] at 5 pm — and it is the most complex document I have seen,” said Cunha. “We’ve been invited to a webinar for them to explain how to figure out our numbers. That’s going to take place on October the 30th … [and] they’re bringing on a special consultant to explain to us how to use this calculator,” said Cunha.
“If it is this complex, what are you doing wrong?”
Low-income families at risk
In addition to changing how it funds participating child-care centres, Ontario has announced changes to subsidies for low-income families who send their children to centres not participating in the subsidized program.
These changes put families at risk of losing access to subsidized child-care, says Deepa Mansharamani, owner and director at La Maison Montessori Kingston, a French Montessori child-care centre in Kingston.
Until Dec. 31, the low-income family child-care subsidy is available to children attending any child-care centre, whether the centre participates in Ottawa’s subsidized program or not. Low-income families pay little to no daily fees while the centre receives a subsidy to cover the cost difference.
For example, a family earning $20,000 or less pays no fees; families with a net income of $40,000 pay about $8 a day; and families making $50,000 pay $19, according to provincial estimates.
But under Ontario’s new child-care funding model, only centres participating in Ottawa’s subsidized child-care program will be eligible to receive low-income family subsidies.
“It will be heartbreaking to have to turn families away because we can no longer serve them,” said Mansharamani, whose centre does not participate in Ottawa’s subsidized child-care program.
Families already receiving provincial child-care subsidies will continue to do so. The changes affect families who apply for the subsidy in 2025 or later.
About 10 per cent — or 555 of the province’s 5,776 licensed child-care centres — will be ineligible to receive the low-income family subsidy due to this change, because they are not participants in the subsidized program.
Exacerbating the effect on low-income families, Ottawa’s subsidized program does not prioritize access for families who qualify as low income — and waitlists to get into such centres have exploded. In some regions, the wait time to get into programs is six years.
Most of the families who have a child enrolled at a participating centre are middle- to high-income families, says Prassoulis. “They were the ones who could afford it before [the federal subsidy program].
“Genuinely, I worry for the low-income families,” said Cunha. “These are our most vulnerable children, children with special needs as well. Where are they going to go to access quality child care that’s affordable, that meets their needs?
Churcher, of the Association of Child Care Entrepreneurs, says other provinces are watching how Ontario’s funding model changes unfold.
“The rest of Canada, we’re paying attention to what’s happening with this funding formula in Ontario, because the cost control frameworks are part of Ottawa’s subsidized child-care program. They are coming through every province,” she said.
“Alberta will see one in the spring, and B.C. will be after that — so we’re very much invested in how this rolls out in Ontario, because we know it’s coming for us too.”
