Some private Toronto daycare centres are closed today as operators are protesting at Queen’s Park regarding upcoming changes to the $10-a day daycare program.
More than 50 day care centres in the GTA are expected to be protesting today, regarding the government’s proposal to further reduce fees at the beginning of 2025, according to The Private Operators Group (POG), which represents more than 950 private daycare facilities in Ontario.
The POG has created an online petition calling out the government for planning to cut costs to the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) program overall rather than making daycare more affordable for parents.
According to the petition, daycares are concerned about the lack of funding that doesn’t cover costs for children with special needs, extra staff wages, and emergency funds. They’re also protesting against certain centres in specific areas having less funding than others, and cutting costs for higher funded centres while not increasing costs for lower funded centres to balance overall funding.
“We are asking the government to put a pause to this program, to a 75-page document that we don’t even have clear direction on…We want to see the government fund the parents. That’s what we want to see. That’s where you’ll see real parental choice is when we fund the families and leave us centres out,” Executive director of Zoe’s Tender Years Child Care Inc. Zoe Prassoulis told Now Toronto in an interview at the protest.
Prassoulis says the government’s new cost-control model and one-size-fits-all approach controls how businesses are operated, which takes full autonomy away from how owners choose to provide care.
The CWELCC program was launched in Mar. 2022 to provide an average of $10 per day daycare across the province in phases by the end of 2026.
Back in August, the Ontario government made proposed amendments to the CWELCC program, including a cost-based funding model which is set to come into effect Jan. 1, 2025.
This new approach replaces the “revenue replacement approach” that was used from 2022-2024, where “operators are eligible for the amounts required to buy down the parent fees (plus cost escalation).
“While this approach has worked for many it has also posed challenges, including that it was based on a point in time when some operators had kept fees low to support families during the COVID-19 pandemic. The new funding approach prioritizes a simple and easy-to-administer system that is consistent across the province and is representative of the true costs of operating child care,” the government said in a press release back in August.
However, unlike the first two phased fee reductions, the province is requiring participating centres to charge a maximum daily fee of $22 per day for children under six years old instead of fees being lowered by a percentage amount.
“Any CWELCC-enrolled licensee charging higher than this maximum amount would be required to reduce their fees [and] any new licensee enrolling in the CWELCC system for the first time would be required to set fees at or below the maximum prescribed amount, after discussing what the amount would be with their service system manager,” the government’s proposal said.
The province is also cutting funding for daycare centres not enrolled in CWELCC and providing benchmark funding based on how much it costs for the centre to operate in its specific area, the government said in its press release.
Owner of private daycare Little Kids Daycare Centre in Oakville, Debbi Cunha, says the government is not following a cost replacement approach, but is rather participating in cost allocation.
“If something breaks in my centre, I’m going to have to go to my regional municipality and ask permission to replace it. How long will that take?” Cunha told Now Toronto.
Cunha also explained that although she wants daycare to be affordable for parents, the new program needs to be able to benefit providers and staff as well.
“In regards to staffing, the new funding is based on ratio. That’s minimal standards. If a child has special needs, if a child is going through a difficult time, or needs to settle in. There’s so many reasons that children need a little bit of extra attention. How will we be able to manage that in an already busy classroom?” Cunha said.
Meanwhile, non-profit child care centres are choosing to go along with the proposed changes, according to a news release from Carolyn Ferns, the public policy coordinator at the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care.
The Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario (AECEO), which includes the YMCA of Greater Toronto and Treetop Children’s Centre in Toronto, believes all programs in Ontario should be part of the $10-a-day system.
“System building takes time, it comes with challenges, and we still need big improvements to wages and working conditions in Ontario. But that doesn’t mean that the $10-a-day plan, and its current and potential benefits for educators, should be paused. In fact it should be happening faster than ever,” AECEO Executive Director Alana Powell said in a release.
