Ford urged to abandon child-care changes
Councillors say move wwould have ‘negative impact on quality’
Toronto council is urging Premier Doug Ford’s government to abandon plans for controversial changes to Ontario’s child- care regulations.
“These changes are reckless,” city councillor Mike Layton said Thursday after voting 24-0 wwith council colleagues includ- ing Mayor John Tory to tell FFord to scrap the proposed re- f forms.
The proposals, posted to the government’s website on Oct. 2, arose from a scheduled fiveyyear review of the Child Care a and Early Years Act.
Under the revised rules, daycare operators could apply to the ministry to follow a new set of age categories. They include allowing a urrently infants separated and toddlers into 0— to-18-months and 18-to-30months groups — being kept together in a 0-to-24-months group.
Child-care providers could also lower staff-to-child ratios and increase group sizes for some age categories.
The province says the goal is to boost daycare spaces and give providers more flexibility.
Staff taking care of kindergarten-age children would no longer have to belong to the industry’s self-regulating college.
Non-qualified staff could backfill qualified staff for up to two weeks. Experience reqquired for supervisor designa- tion would including “general children’s programming,” rather than only licensed child care.
A City of Toronto staff report said: “Taken together, the cchanges would have a negative impact on quality, and would undermine efforts to raise the bar on the reputation of the profession of early childhood education.”
This month Shanley McNamee, the city’s general manager of children’s services, told a city committee that lowering the staff-to-child ration would put “more demands on an already struggling workforce” while decreasing the quality of child care and “potentially the health and safety of the children.”
Coun. Joe Cressy, chair of Toronto Public Health, said economic recovery from the pandemic depends on parents having access to safe and affordable child care.
Coun. Michael Thompson voted with his colleagues to urge the Ford government to reconsider but said Ford himself is willing to listen to feedback.
“I have spoken directly with the premier with respect to this matter,” said Thompson, a onetime city council ally of Premier Ford and his brother, the late Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.
“I can tell you that the premier is seized of this issue and is aware of the concerns that we have.” But the Ford government gave no hint Thursday it’s reconsidering reforms despite the objections from Toronto aand others including the Onta- rio Coalition for Better Child Care and Association of Early Childhood Educators.
“Child care in this province remains expensive and inaccessible for too many parents,” a spokesperson for Education Minister Stephen Lecce told the Star.
“The status quo is not working for parents, especially with such disruption to the lives of the workforce through this pandemic,” so the government is consulting people with an aaim to boost access and afford- aability, she said.
The Ford government gave no hint Thursday it’s reconsidering reforms