ONTARIO – Following a federal pledge to make child care more affordable for families across the country, the Province of Ontario has finally reached a deal, but what does it mean for families in Wellington County?
On March 28, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Doug Ford, accompanied by Minister of Education Stephen Lecce, announced a deal to bring $10/day child care to families had officially been reached – the last one needed to fulfil Trudeau’s pledge to bring child care fees down to an average of $10 a day in every province and territory by the end of 2026. As part of the deal, Ontario will cut its fees an average of 50 per cent by the end of December.
The deal also includes creating 86,000 new spaces in child care by the end of the five years and setting new minimum wage floors for child care workers of $18 an hour for staff and $20 an hour for supervisors. Those wages will rise $1 an hour each year until it hits $25 an hour.
For parents, the funding means a reduction of child-care fees by an average of 25%, with a further 25% drop a year from now.
In the short-term, parents of children aged five and under in licensed child care settings will start getting rebates in May, retroactive to April 1, for a fee reduction of up to 25%.
Further cuts are set for September 2024 to bring Ontario to an average of $10 a day by September 2025.
Luisa Artuso, director of the county’s Children’s Early Years Division, said the county’s directly-operated centres, home child care and its licensed home child care agency will be opting in.
She said the deal, which only applies to licensed child care providers, will hopefully allow families to go back to work because they can now afford childcare.
“For those that are able to access a licensed childcare space, it increases the purchasing power of that family,” she explained. “It allows them to participate more fully in the workforce, because they’re confident of where their children are being cared for.
“So this has a lot of positive ripple effects for the families, for the children as well as the community at large.”
As the consolidated municipal service manager for child care, the county will be managing the agreement with all operators who want to opt in within Wellington County and the City of Guelph. Right now, Artuso said the county is awaiting further guidelines from the ministry, which are expected to be released in the coming weeks.
“We’re anticipating that we’ll get our first payment for the service delivery area in May,” she explained. “And then we need to make a payment to the operators that are opting in in May, so that they can rebate parents back to April 1st of 2022.”
For those who have opted in, they’ve had to freeze their fees as of March 27.
“That’s a commitment that they need to make to us,” Artuso explained. “Some of them are opting in right away, and some are waiting for more details, because they’re not exactly sure what they’re opting into.
“Later this month, and in May, we’ll be finding more information about exactly how this works,” she added. “But I’m fairly confident the majority of operators will want to be opting in.”
Currently, monthly child care rates in the county range from $871 to $1,226, based on preschool to toddler program rates.
Artuso recognizes child care fees are high, noting that “if you have young children and you have more than two or three children and they’re all in a full-time childcare that definitely is extremely expensive for families.
“So the 25% fee reduction is great news for those families,” she added.
“Then we’re anticipating and hopeful that it will go down to 50 – it needs to go down to 50% by the end of this year – and then eventually [in] five years it’s going to be an average of $10 a day.”
Lack of childcare spaces
Asked if families have historically expressed concerns about child care affordability in the county, Artuso said the lack of accessibility has been more of a long-standing concern locally.
Speaking about Wellington Place, Artuso said for families looking to access chilcare, the waitlist is currently about two to three years.
“So we are severely underserviced out in the county,” she said. “Mapleton for instance, has the second highest population of children [six and under] and they have absolutely no licensed childcare. Puslinch also has no licensed childcare.”
In recent years, the county has increased spaces in Erin, Palmerston, Fergus and currently has applications in progress for Rockwood and Mapleton.
“The county has definitely been our priority,” Artuso said. “We are maximizing any opportunity that we have, or any funding that we have, in order to create more licensed childcare spaces out in the county, and that will continue to be our priority.”
Another way to increase licensed spaces is through home child care, she explained, noting the county has been getting calls from providers that are not licensed or not with a licensed agency about becoming contracted.
“To me, the way to maximize this [deal] for families in a short period of time in a very cost-effective way, is to increase the number of providers that are contracted with a licensed agency,” she said.
The two pressing issues facing the county, she stressed, are accessibility and affordability.
“The only place that we’ve been able to build a new child care centre is where there is space, either by land or retrofitting the school,” she said.
It’s through school board applications, she said, that they’ve been able to increase spaces in the county, but it’s been limiting. Artuso said the county has been advocating to the ministry to allow it to have community-based child care programs.
“And it’s not just Wellington County that’s experiencing that barrier to getting capital funds from the ministry,” she explained. “Every municipality that has a rural geographic area, and particularly up north, they’re finding that difficult.”
Looking at the percentages of the spaces available to the population, Artuso said it varies across the county, ranging from zero to about 11% on average.
“So we only have basis for about 11% of the population out in the county and that’s not acceptable,” she said.
