GUELPH – With two years to go, the County of Wellington is more than halfway to reaching its goal for affordable licensed child care spaces as set out by the province with the introduction of the Canada-Wide Early Learning Child Care (CWELCC) System.
“At the end of December 2024, 952 spaces have been newly enrolled into CWELCC, with another 448 spaces planned and approved for 2025,” Mandy Koroniak, the county’s director of children’s early years, told members of the joint social services and land ambulance committee on Jan. 8.
The CWELCC system, sometimes referred to as $10-a-day child care, has been implemented in Ontario in phases.
In March of 2022, the province announced a fee reduction of up to 25 per cent for children under age 6.
By the end of that year, fees had been further reduced to a provincial average of $23 per day, according to the province’s website.
Starting this month, fees are to be capped at $22 per day, it stated.
Koroniak explained that on Dec. 22, the Ministry of Education provided service system managers with targets for CWELCC enrolment to be achieved by the end of 2026.
“The ministry provided Wellington with a target of 1,721 spaces,” she said.
According to a chart included in Koroniak’s report to the committee, the newly enrolled CWELCC spaces are mainly in the City of Guelph.
Of the 952 spaces, 452 of them are in the city, and another 146 are in the county. There are also 354 home-based spaces, located in either the city or county.
A recruitment campaign in the fall led to the creation of up to 108 new licensed home child care spaces in Wellington Home Child Care, the county’s home child care agency, the report stated.
It also notes that 113 spaces opened at new provincially-funded school-based child care centres in Guelph and in Guelph/Eramosa as a result of joint submissions with the Wellington Catholic District School Board (WCDSB) to the ministry’s Capital Priorities program.
The 448 spaces planned and approved for 2025 include an 88-space child care centre in Wellington North and a 98-space child-care centre in Guelph, the report stated.
“Both are expected to open in 2025 and are for-profit spaces that meet the CWELCC auspice ratio requirements set for Wellington by the ministry,” it stated.
Through another joint submission with the WCDSB, a 64-space school-based centre has been approved as part of a new elementary school in Mapleton, expected to open in 2026, it said.
Councillor Matthew Bulmer spoke up to ask whether the economic development department was aware of the child care recruitment campaign.
“To me, this sort of crosses over with economic development,” he said, noting the need for child care could be an opportunity to create a small business.
Koroniak said there were conversations with the economic development department, as well as the communications team, as part of the work on the home child care recruitment campaign.
“We did also have some materials created that we intend to leverage at future events,” she said.