It should soon become easier to find subsidized, licensed daycare in Ontario.
In a pre-budget announcement, Finance Minister Charles Sousa said the province plans to earmark over $200-million to increase licensed child care and make it more affordable.
The plan includes spaces for 24,000 more children up to four years old in the 2017-2018 fiscal year. It is the first step of a 2016 Throne Speech promise to create 100,000 spaces across the province in five years.
60% of those spaces will be subsidized.
It’s welcome news for a province that has some of the highest child care costs in the country. The problem is quite often not a lack of daycare spaces, but a lack of parents who can afford them.
“It is, I think In a word, desperate,” says Sebastian Ronderos-Morgan, President of the Board at Wellington Daycare in downtown Ottawa. “It’s a pretty serious situation right now in, what I understand, all of Ontario but certainly in Ottawa.”
Ronderos-Morgan says available subsidies have not kept up with demand, to the point where parents who have put an older child in daycare can’t do the same with a younger sibling, even though their economic situation hasn’t changed.
His main concern about the latest funding announcement is that it needs to lead to a more long-term strategy to address the cost of child care. “The announcement today is important. My fear is that it might just be another band-aid. What we probably need in Canada and certainly in Ontario is something more comprehensive,” he says.
The provincial announcement includes a promise to “develop a child care affordability strategy” in the coming months.
