Early childhood educators won’t be getting an expected $1 an hour wage increase next year, and minimum pay rates will be frozen at 2026 levels, says a memo from the Ministry of Education.
It means that the lowest rate for those who work with children under the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care program will remain at $25.86 an hour in 2027.
“There is going to be a huge outcry … This is very bad news for the lowest paid (educators),” said Carolyn Ferns, public policy co-ordinator for the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care.
To freeze wages amid an affordability crisis is “heartless and foolish,” she said, adding, “in real dollars, this is a cut.”
Such a freeze “will only sharpen the workforce shortage in child care while thousands of parents are stuck on wait-lists.”
The memo, which went out Oct. 30, comes after the province signed on to another four years of the national child-care plan, which aims to bring child-care costs down to $10 a day for parents.
In Ontario, the average daily fee is now $19, with a cap of $22, and that too will remain unchanged in 2027.
Alberta and British Columbia have also not reached the $10-a-day threshold.
Wages were initially set at $18 an hour when the program began five years ago and have been slowly increasing each year, Ferns added, with ”$1 increases each year to try to help alleviate the workforce crisis. So to now have that frozen in 2027 at the current level is very bad news.”
The four-year agreement includes more than $12 billion in funding from the federal government.
Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra recently told the Canadian Press that Ottawa “understood that there was a massive shortfall in her program and came back with more money, and this allows us to at least get probably to the end of (2027) with the current fees that we’re at.”
He said that if fees are to be lowered, “then they’re going to have to provide significantly more dollars to do that. But this provides good stability for parents and for the operators.”
In the memo, the ministry says it “remains committed” to creating 86,000 new spaces, but won’t meet the end-of-year deadline, saying it will, however, hit the target by March 31 of next year.
With files from Canadian Press
