Manar Fadhil has a child with special needs meaning she was hit with a one-two punch when her childcare centre opted out of the national $10-a-day childcare program.
“We were informed by the management that they will be opting out of the [Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care] program,” Fadhil tells CityNews.
“It does mean that we would potentially be paying double what we used to pay per month and we would also be losing resource consultant privileges.”
It’s not the only Milton provider opting out of the CWELCC program which aims to subsidize fees for parents with a goal of getting to $10-a-day by 2026.
Kaitlyn Ledingham says she was paying approximately $300 bi-weekly for her childcare but when her provider opted out in 2025, those payments jumped to $700.
“My heart breaks for people, especially those families that have multiple kids in daycare. We’re lucky that our oldest is already in kindergarten,” she says. “For a lot of families, this would be financially devastating.”
As of January 1st, 2025, Ontario introduced a new funding formula for CWELCC to ensure families currently enrolled pay no more than $22 a day. But Fadhil says if childcare centres are choosing to opt out, that means it’s not sustainable for them.
“The waitlist to these [CWELCC] centres is going to be two to three years long. My child’s going to be in school by the time his name actually comes up,” she says.
Advocacy group Child Care Now says the Milton area has a higher percentage of for-profit childcare than other municipalities, such as Toronto.
“The percentage of for-profit providers overall in the province is around 30 per cent and 70 per cent not-for-profit,” says Morna Ballantyne, the executive director of Child Care Now. “The not-for-profit providers, they are sticking with the program.”
“One of the things that we would like is for local government in places like Milton but also in other places where there’s a severe shortage of licensed spaces, we want them to step in and try to figure out where new spaces can be created,” explains Ballantyne.
Officials in Halton Region say 89 per cent of childcare sites in Milton are enrolled in the Canada-Wide Early Learning & Child Care system.
