When Melissa Bruno saw the impact of Canada’s national child care program on her own daycare bill, she was elated.
After parent fees were cut in half at the end of 2022, the Toronto mother and her partner had an extra $1,000 each month. The savings were a major factor in their decision to buy a house that spring.
Two years later, Bruno’s situation has been upended. In November, her son’s daycare told parents it was pulling out of the national program and fees would be increasing 150 per cent in the new year.
Bruno, who was planning to send her second child to the same daycare in a matter of months, was facing the prospect of paying nearly $4,700 per month for child care — an increase that would be impossible for her family to absorb. Every other daycare she called had years-long wait-lists.
“We based our big financial decisions around what we thought was the surety of having fixed daycare fees that were only supposed to go down,” she said.
The elation she once felt was replaced by a different feeling: “Rage,” she said. “I am full of rage.”
Ontario’s participation rate lowest of all
The federal government’s $30-billion Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program is meant to dramatically increase access to child care by reducing fees and creating 250,000 new spaces across the country. As it enters its fourth year, the benefits to many parents of young children are undeniable. Eight provinces and territories have already reduced daycare fees to $10/day or less. Estimated average savings for parents range from $4,000 to $14,000 per year, per child.
In Ontario, parent fees for participating daycares have now been cut to a maximum of $22 per day, and the goal is to reduce them further to $10/day by next year.
And yet, problems persist, particularly in the Greater Toronto Area, where more daycares have opted out of the national program than anywhere else.
While several provinces and territories boast 100-per-cent participation in the Canada-wide program, Ontario’s participation rate is 92 per cent — the lowest in the country. Within the GTA, the participation rate is even lower at 87 per cent, according to data collected by the Star from individual municipalities. (Ontario’s Ministry of Education says data it collected in June showed an 89-per-cent participation rate in the GTA. They could not confirm the Star’s findings.)
The main cause of the lower rates in Toronto and its surrounding cities are the number of for-profit daycare operators choosing not to participate.
Twenty-five per cent of for-profit daycares in the GTA have opted-out of the national program, according to data collected by the Star. By comparison, just 6 per cent of non-profits have opted out.
Sunnyside Day Care, where Bruno’s son attended, is among 14 for-profit Toronto daycares that told parents in the fall they were leaving the national program, according to The Canadian Press.
These departures are not reflected in the data provided to the Star by the city, because they didn’t take effect until this month.
Daycare operators refused to explain decision, parent alleges
The decision by Sunnyside and other daycares to pull out of the program comes as the province introduces a new method for delivering federal funding to child-care operators. Previously government funding simply replaced a portion of parent fees. Starting this month, daycares will have the bulk of their operating costs — based on a regional average — paid by the government.
The new funding formula also guarantees a profit or surplus of about 8 per cent but does not allow any more than that.
Sunnyside Day Care’s letter to parents does not specify what exactly about the national program or the new funding formula they had problems with.
“We hope that future changes to the (Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care) program will evolve or be replaced with something that allows for increased viability, better access and more choice in selecting childcare for all parents,” the letter reads.
Holton Hunter and John McCallum are listed in corporation documents as the directors of Sunnyside Day Care. They did not respond to an interview request or questions sent via email.
Bruno said Hunter and McCallum refused to meet with her and other parents to explain their decision. She and a group of parents pulled corporation records and found that in addition to Sunnyside’s two locations, Hunter and McCallum are also the registered directors of Curious Caterpillars, a Toronto daycare with two locations that are also pulling out of the program.
Shanley McNamee, general manager for Toronto’s Children’s Services, which administers the national program locally, said the vast majority of child-care operators in the city welcomed the new funding method, saying it provides more flexibility and certainty.
McNamee said in addition to the 14 daycares that pulled out this month, there were eight others that left the program earlier in the year. But city staff also convinced 26 daycares that had never joined in the first place to come aboard. So there has been a net gain in the city.
McNamee said she would love to have 100 per cent buy-in, but the program is still in its early days and while it may not be perfect, it’s still making a significant impact.
“Five years ago no families were benefitting, right? It’s a big system, it takes time,” she said. “We are going from a market-driven to a publicly funded system.”
Funding formula concerns for-profit operator
Meanwhile, a vocal minority of for-profit operators garnered significant attention in the fall for their opposition to the program. The Ontario chapter of ACE National Coalition of Childcare Operators organized a week of rolling closures of their daycare centres in October to protest the new funding method and the national program as a whole.
Debbie Cunha, who owns Little Kids Daycare’s two locations in Oakville, was among those who closed for one day in October. Cunha’s daycares are currently enrolled in the national program, but she isn’t sure how long she will continue in it. She said her costs are significantly higher than the average for her region, and she fears that submitting to the national program’s restrictions and bureaucratic control will put her out of business.
“Child care is not cookie cutter,” she said. “The way that I run my centres versus the next person are very different, but they’re also very legitimate.”
Cunha said she would prefer a program that funds parents directly, either through a tax credit or by increasing the threshold to qualify for a municipal subsidy, which allows low-income families to pay less.
Those who support the national program say funding parents directly would neither reduce fees, nor create more spaces, which are the program’s primary goals.
Ontario, for its part, has appealed to the federal government to lift the cap on the proportion of for-profit spaces in the province. Ontario’s agreement with Ottawa requires that the share of for-profit spaces at the time of the agreement — 30 per cent — cannot increase. The agreement also requires Ontario to build 86,000 new child-care spaces by 2026, and the province has said it can’t meet that target without allowing more growth in the for-profit sector.
Ontario’s Education Minister Jill Dunlop, whose ministry is responsible for child care, declined to be interviewed for this story and her office did not respond to questions directly.
In a statement, Dunlop said non-profit daycare providers play “an important role” in the child-care system. “But our municipal partners have told us that they cannot fill the demand alone which is why we are advocating for more flexibility.”
The federal government, meanwhile, wants the province to stop lobbying for better conditions for for-profits and focus instead on aggressively creating new spaces.
“I think the work that the province needs to do, frankly, is making sure that the operators in this province are here primarily focused on providing high-quality care for kids, full stop,” said Jenna Sudds, the federal minister for families, children and social development.
Sudds said it’s “unfortunate” that a small number of for-profit operators “are choosing profit over providing affordable care for families,” but their decision also highlights the urgency of creating new spaces in daycares committed to the national program so more parents can benefit.
Any new spaces that might be created won’t arrive fast enough for Bruno’s family.
Unable to pay Sunnyside’s dramatically increased fees or find another affordable space, Bruno decided to pull her son out and share the costs of a nanny with another family.
It’s more expensive than what she was previously paying, but significantly less than what she would have had to pay to stay at Sunnyside. Other parents she’s spoken with are taking out lines of credit to pay for the increased fees, or pulling their kids out and taking time off work.
What’s most frustrating, Bruno said, is that her tax dollars are now subsidizing other people’s child care while she is unable to benefit from the program at a time in her life when she needs it the most.
