Toronto parents pay the highest child-care fees in the country. Elsewhere in Canada, provinces are capping the burden
More provinces are using fee caps to lower costs but Ontario is not, according to a new study
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THAN HALF of Canadian provinces are using fee caps to rein in parents’ galloping child-care costs, but Ontario isn’t one of them, according to a national survey being released Thursday.
“For the first time in five years, we are seeing movement, with more provinces using public policy to make child care more affordable,” said study coauthor David Macdonald of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
“But these bright spots are overshadowed by the fact that fees in Canada remain astronomical, outpacing inflation in most cities,” added Macdonald, senior economist for the left-leaning think tank.
Toronto parents continue to pay the highest median fees in the country, with infant care topping $1,685 a month or $20,220 a year, says the centre’s fifth annual report on childcare affordability. Parents in Mississauga, Hamilton and Kitchener pay $1,490 while median infant fees in Vancouver are $1,400 a month, according to the study, which surveyed fees in licensed centres and homes in 28 cities across the country last summer.
The report shows Hamilton had the third-highest median infant fees in
2018 at $1,497 a month — behind only Mississauga and Toronto.
The median monthly fee for toddlers in 2018 was $1,156, which puts Hamilton in the ninth spot, behind places like Vancouver, Toronto and Mississauga.
The report shows the monthly median preschool age fee in Hamilton was $977 last year, putting the city in 11th place.
From 2017 to 2018, the median preschooler fee in Hamilton grew by 4.9 per cent.
But since 2014, preschool-age fees have climbed 21 per cent in Hamilton — almost three times the rate of inflation, according to the report.
In Ontario, where the previous Liberal government had planned to introduce free preschool starting next year, Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives have promised a child-care fee tax rebate instead.
Toronto parent Jessica Dumelie, 30, who is on maternity leave with her second child, is bracing for the financial fallout when she returns to her health-care job next January.
Monthly child-care costs for her daughters, who will be 18 months old and almost 4 years old when she goes back to work, will be $1,750 and $1,650 respectively and easily eclipse her family’s mortgage payments. Fortunately, the whopping $3,400 monthly child-care bill will drop when Dumelie’s older daughter starts kindergarten in the fall of 2020.
But Dumelie and her husband, who works in finance, will still be paying more than $2,000 a month for toddler and after-school care.
“We were very excited about the possibility of free preschool for our younger one,” said Dumelie, a member of parent group Toronto East Enders for Child Care. “But now that doesn’t look like an option.”
She’s not sure how the tax rebate would work or even if her family would qualify.
In the meantime, Dumelie said her family is “making sacrifices” and putting money aside to pay for child care when she returns to work.
“Costs are wild,” she said. “We’ll just have to find some way to make it work.”