Ontario Cutting Funds to Day Cares Not Enrolled in Federal $10-a-Day Program

Many daycare centres in Ontario not enrolled in the $10-a-day scheme will soon lose provincial funding. The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck

About 500 daycare centres in Ontario that are not participating in the $10-a-day child care program will soon lose provincial funding.

In an Aug. 15 letter from the Ontario Ministry of Education to child care centres around the province, assistant deputy minister Holly Moran gave details about the $10-a-day program, known as the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program (CWELCC).

She said in the letter that as of 2025, child care centres not participating in CWELCC will no longer receive general operating, fee subsidy, or wage enhancement grants.

“Starting in 2025, as the age 0-5 portion of the routine funding is being integrated into cost-based funding under CWELCC to ensure the success of that system, routine funding must not be used to support such licensees, unless it relates to fee subsidies,” Moran wrote.

Fee subsidy agreements already in place will continue to be paid until the child in care turns 5 years or leaves the centre.

Andrea Hannen, executive director of the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario (ADCO), says the loss of funding is unfair to day care providers and families who use the impacted centres.

“Families that receive a fee subsidy will no longer be able to choose those centres, and that’s a big deal, because those centres are sometimes the only centres that are available in a certain area,” she told The Epoch Times in a phone interview. “This does not help increase access to licensed child care.”

Without funding, day cares may need to cut staff wages or raise the price for parents, Hannen said.

Hannen said loss of government funding will affect about 10 percent of Ontario day cares.

She says some of the centres had tried to get into the CWELCC program but were not approved, likely due to federal government limits.

When Ontario joined the national day care program it committed to creating 86,000 new child-care spaces. So far there are 51,000 new spaces, but only half of them are part of the $10-a-day system, according to Ontario officials.

The province blames a federal cap on for-profit spaces that has resulted in applications for thousands of potential spaces being rejected.

“We continue to call on the federal government to lift their cap on for-profit providers, which is limiting the opportunity for operators to join the $10-a-day program and access funding, and is limiting the availability of affordable child-care spaces close to home,” says the office of Ontario Education Minister Jill Dunlop.

Federal Minister of Families, Children, and Social Development of Canada has told Ontario that she is open to a discussing lifting the cap, but she needs to see more information on how the province is trying to create more non-profit centres, since the $10-a-day system is supposed to be primarily not-for-profit.

Family Fees Cut

The government of Ontario announced that it would be capping day care fees at $22 starting in January 2025. The goal is to get fees down to $10 a day by 2026.

Ottawa has committed to spending $13.2 billion to get child care fees to $10 by March 2026, while Ontario says it has put $21.6 billion into full-day kindergarten programs and $11.8 billion into early learning and child care.

As of March 2023, there were more than 5,770 licensed child care centres in the province, 148 licensed home child care agencies, and 505,000 licensed spaces available, said the Ontario government.

CWELCC Audit

In July, Canada’s auditor general said she plans to audit the CWELCC program.

Auditor General Karen Hogan made the remarks in a July 18 letter, which was provided to the ADCO.

ADCO had asked for a review of the program to assess its sustainability for taxpayers, the province, and child care operators.

The Canadian Press and Carolina Avendano contributed to this report.