Ottawa recently announced a four-year expansion to child-care funding for Ontario, but child-care advocates say the agreement falls short.
On Sept. 29, Ottawa announced nearly $12 billion over four years for Ontario’s subsidized child-care program, beginning in 2027. This is in addition to the $13.8 billion provided to Ontario since the program launched in 2021.
The funding will ensure that fees in subsidized child-care spaces do not exceed $22 a day until June 30, 2027.
This announcement gives parents certainty until the end of the school year, but does not provide details about how to improve the subsidized child-care program, says Andrea Hannen, executive director of the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario.
“Until the federal program is reviewed and redesigned, it’s going to be very, very difficult for Ontario to meet its space creation targets,” she said.
Unmet targets
The Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care program launched in 2021 with the goal of creating 250,000 new child-care spots by March 2026 and reducing parents’ child-care fees to $10 a day.
Those targets have not been met. Last year, an auditor general’s report said that about 112,000 of those spaces had been created by March 2024. And only five provinces and all three territories had met the goal of $10 a day by this date.
Ontario is also missing its goals. Last year, the province’s auditor general reported Ontario had only added 36,000 new spaces, while it had promised to add 86,000 by March 2026.
But Ontario’s average child-care fees have improved. Before 2022, the average fee was $48 a day; today, they are $19.
Some operators say the program’s design hinders its growth. In Ontario, 70 per cent of spaces in the national program must be in not-for-profit facilities.
Ron Craig, president of ChildVentures Early Learning Academy, says the program’s cap on for-profit centres has restricted his centre’s ability to expand.
ChildVentures, a for-profit company, provides child care to nearly 2,000 children across 13 locations in Ontario, 11 of which are part of the national program.
“I’ve had very limited ability to open centres over the last five years,” he said.
Craig supports the goals of the national program, but says its rollout has been “choppy.”
“This program is great for affordability, but accessibility has gone the other way,” he said, noting many children are on long waitlists for subsidized spots. (Ontario’s auditor general found Ontario does not have centralized data about waitlists for the program.)
The national program is also administratively burdensome, Craig says. Interpretations of funding guidelines differ by region, meaning there is no consistency in how he can use the funding to maintain his buildings or hire staff.
The program “can be fixed,” said Craig. In his view, this means allowing more private operators to be part of the program.
Calls for reform
Krystal Churcher, executive director of the Association of Canadian Early Learning Programs, says more attention needs to be paid to the families who cannot find a child-care space.
The announcement had “big holes,” she said: it did not say how the province plans to address the problems in child care.
“We should start having some real conversations about all of the families who are outside of this program right now,” said Churcher, who is also a child-care operator in Alberta.
There are 900,000 children currently enrolled in the federal child-care program, federal Minister of Jobs and Families Patty Hajdu said at the provincial announcement. According to 2021 census data, there are just over 2,225,000 children under the age of five in Canada.
The national program needs to be reformed so more low-income families can find affordable child care, Churcher says. In her view, child-care funding should be attached to families, not centres, by enabling parents to apply for financial assistance.
‘Huge red flag’
But not everyone sees this as a good option.
Morna Ballantyne, executive director of Child Care Now advocacy organization, says that under past federal child-care allowance programs, “parent fees soar upwards putting the cost of child care out of reach of almost all families.” Many centres struggled to survive, she says.
Such a program would be a “major step backwards,” she said in an email to Canadian Affairs.
But Child Care Now is “deeply concerned” that the announcement did not include commitments for new child-care spaces or address the province’s shortage of qualified early childhood educators.
Like Ballantyne, Amber Straker sees the announcement’s inattention to early childhood educators as a “huge red flag.”
New child-care spaces are only operational if there are qualified staff to care for children at them, says Straker, who is executive director of the Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario.
“We can build the spaces, we can have a room,” she said. “But if we do not have an [early childhood educator] in that space … this is an empty room.”
Ontario’s auditor general found that, in December 2023, 27 per cent of spaces in the national program did not have children in them, either because they were vacant or the spaces were not operational.
It also found the province needed about 10,000 more early childhood educators to meet staffing requirements of new spaces.
For her part, Straker says the not-for-profit sector is ready and able to expand to meet child-care needs. It just needs proper funding, she says.
At the press conference announcing the funding extension, Ontario Minister of Education Paul Calandra emphasized the stability the new funding gives families and said the province will continue to work toward meeting its goals.
“Today’s announcement isn’t about solving all the problems with child care across the country,” he said.
“It’s about giving stability, and showing … Ontario families that we are committed to making life as affordable as possible.”
