Feds announce 40,000 new spaces nationally
TORONTO—Ontario announced the allocation of $1.6 billion aimed at creating 45,000 new licenced child care spaces in the province. The announcement is part of the province’s earlier pledge to create 100,000 new spaces for children aged zero to four years over the course of the next five years. Meanwhile, this past Monday, the federal government signed a deal with most of the provinces to create another 40,000 spaces focussing on First Nations and low income families.
“Today we’re taking the next big leap to transform the way we deliver child care in the province,” Ontario Early Years and Child Care Minister Indira Naidoo-Harris told reporters during a June 6 press conference held in a Toronto daycare. Adding that this announcement will help set the province on a path towards a universally accessible child-care system.
The new framework announced by the province is targeted at funding new spaces by providing more funding for licenced home child care while offering more fee subsidies for those families that need help accessing day care.
As part of the child care approach, the province will also be looking at broadening and tweaking those subsidies, with some suggestion that the parameters may be broadened to include both middle and low income families. The new guidelines will be part of a provincial effort to establish a general provincial guideline on what constitutes quality day care.
While Manitoulin Sudbury District Services Board CAO Fern Dominelli noted that the devil is always in the details when it comes to government announcements, he was willing to venture a cautiously optimistic initial statement.
“The Manitoulin-Sudbury DSB is pleased with the ground-breaking set of initiatives released by the Ministry of Education to help build an accessible, affordable and high quality early years and child care system that is responsive to the needs of children aged 0-12 and their families,” said Mr. Dominelli. “We will be working closely with our program advisor to determine local priorities focused on increasing access to affordable child care for children aged zero to four.”
According to Minister Naidoo-Harris, the announced funding represents the largest ever capital investment in child care in the province’s history, and she pledged that, although the details of the changes have not yet been fully worked out, families will soon see a significant shift in the sector.
The new national child care deal the Liberal government has signed with the provinces may not be a universal program, but Families Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said lays the foundations for one sometime down the road.
“It’s an aspiration and long-term vision that is coherent with universality,” Minister Duclos said Monday after he signed a multilateral agreement with the provinces and territories, excluding Quebec, which decided not to join, and British Columbia, still working through the impact of its recent election.
The federal government negotiated the agreement, the Multilateral Early Learning and Child Care Framework, setting out parameters for billions of dollars in new child care spending that was unveiled in the 2017 budget, focussing on quality, accessibility, affordability, flexibility and inclusivity.
“This agreement will help give more Canadian children the best possible start in life and provide more support to families across our country,” Minister Duclos said in making the announcement. “This is the start of a vision and aspiration to help all Canadian children and all Canadian families live the fulfilling lives that they want to live and that they expect to live.”
The funding announced in this agreement is part of the $7.5 billion the Liberals have promised to spend over a decade on child care, beginning with $500 million this year and increasing to $870 million annually by 2026 in order to fund spaces or improvements to existing spaces in provinces and territories, as well as indigenous child care both on and off-reserve.
The lack of affordable daycare options is generally seen as an economic drag on the province’s productivity, as costs can rival mortgage payments for young families in Canada’s major urban centres. A national daycare program had been proposed by the federal government under Paul Martin, but that proposal died on the order table when the then minority Liberal government was defeated and the Conservative government under Stephen Harper chose a different route involving direct payments to parents.
