A daycare at Tunney’s Pasture says it is on the brink of closure after the federal government nearly doubled its rent.

Starting July 1st the Garderie Tunney’s Daycare will have to pay $150,000 a year in rent, up from $82,000 the year before. It’s a fee increase the daycare says it cannot afford to pass on to its clients.

“It is already a lot for parents and at this point our financial analysis shows that we are pretty expensive for the city and we just can't keep increasing the fees,” said Olivier Marois, the President of the Garderie Tunney’s parent-run Board of Directors.

Employees at Statistics Canada started the daycare 28 years ago as a way to increase gender equity in the workforce. The not-for-profit daycare now looks after 49 children ages 12 months to four, and has 15 full-time and 3 part-time staff.

“We are facing closure if PSPC and the federal government don't want to fix a mistake that was made by the previous government which was imposing high rent fees on non-profit charitable organizations and those high rent were imposed on short notice,” Marois says.

“So it’s causing significant financial strains on non-profit organizations.”

For more than 25 years the daycare received what it calls a crucial government subsidy to offset the cost of rent. But in February 2014 that subsidy was withdrawn and the daycare was told it would have to start paying rent at market value.

The not-for-profit was given approximately six months to hand over the cash and after negotiations with Public Services and Procurement Canada, then PWGSC, Marois says the department agreed to a two-year transition period.

While it understands the dayare's concerns, the department says the daycare knew this was change coming and should have been prepared.

“When a department decides to no longer provide such a subsidy, Public Services and Procurement Canada works with the daycare to transition to market rate rent costs,” says Jean-François Létourneau, a media relations officer at PSPC.

"PSPC provided the daycare with a two-year transition period before implementing the market rental rate on April 1, 2016. This period was further extended by 90 days to provide the daycare with additional time to transition and provide adequate notice to parents."

Although it knew about the increase, officials with the Garderie Tunney's facility say it should be grandfathered because of its history and commitment to the surrounding community. Although 82 per cent of children have at least one parent who is a public servant, Marois says their bilinguial daycare is open to anyone and has spots reserved for low income families. 

Parents, many of whom have had several children go through the Garderie Daycare, say a fee hike would force them to look elsewhere. Fees at the daycare are already on the high end and although many parents say the daycare's larger than average size, staff to child ratio and quality of bilingual education makes it a good fit, an increase would be too much.

"In total our costs are $2,000 dollars and that's more than 25 per cent of our disposable income every month, says Chris Li, who has had two children go through the daycare.

"We would have to re-evaluate the situation and figure out if one of us should take a few years off and not only that."

Parents who hope the government will change its mind have started an e-petition that now has more than 300 signatures.

Public Services and Procurement Canada says six subsidized daycares exist in the National Capital Region. It says the department is working with Garderie to help ease this transition.