Province seeks updated childcare law

Legislation would have stiffer penalties for rule-breakers

TORONTO The Ontario government wants to overhaul the province’s childcare legislation and introduce stiff penalties for unlicensed providers who break the rules.

Although the new law comes on the heels of the tragic deaths of several children in unlicensed home daycares, including one in Orléans in July 2010, the government has been working on the update for more than a year.

The Child Care Modernization Act, which Education Minister Liz Sandals tabled Tuesday, will repeal and replace the Day Nurseries Act, which hasn’t been reviewed since 1983.

“Obviously, the world around us has changed,” Sandals said, adding the current law doesn’t reflect the realities of the modern childcare system, which has changed dramatically since the introduction of the province’s fullday kindergarten program in 2010.

The new legislation would empower the Education Ministry to impose an administrative fine on childcare providers of as much as $100,000 per infraction without having to go through the court system, something it can’t do now.

“We think that’s going to enable us to really crack down on those situations where people are deliberately working outside the law,” Sandals said.

The new bill would also increase the maximum penalty for successful prosecution in the courts to $250,000 from $2,000.

Under the changes, licensed home childcare centres would be able to accommodate six children, instead of the current maximum of five. That alone could create approximately 6,000 new licensed spaces across Ontario if all current licensed home care providers took advantage of the new rule, Sandals said.

The new bill would clarify which childcare activities require a licence and which do not. Relatives, babysitters, nannies and camps that provide programs for school-age children would be exempt.

Private schools that care for more than five children under the age of four would need to obtain a licence, which they don’t have to do today.

The new bill would also amend the Education Act to force school boards to offer before- and after-school programs for six- to 12-year-old children where there is sufficient demand.

Currently, for the full-day kindergarten program, “sufficient demand” would mean that if 20 students require beforeand after-school care, the board has to provide it directly or offer it in partnership with a third party.

The government has not set a bar yet for six-to-12 age group.

Unlicensed home daycares have long been a grey area in Ontario. The government doesn’t inspect them regularly or even keep a registry of where they are, even though the current law has actually allowed them to accommodate more children than their licensed counterparts. And should a problem arise, the government would only know about it if someone complained. Monitoring the unlicensed sector will continue to be driven by complaints, Sandals said, but she noted that her ministry has created a dedicated enforcement team to investigate complaints.

The new legislation was welcomed by Ottawa childcare advocate Kim Hiscott, executive director of Andrew Fleck Child Care Services.

“It tips the financial motivation to providers to be affiliated with a licensed agency, and just doing that is going to increase the number of spaces and increase the supervision, support and quality of home child care,” she said.

Currently, an unlicensed provider with three children — ages one, two and three — could legally accept five other children of any age, while a home daycare affiliated with a licensed agency could only accept two additional children, Hiscott said.

Some unlicensed providers — who prefer to think of themselves as independent providers — want the province to introduce standards of care, health and safety for all home daycares, whether they are affiliated with a licensed agency or operate on their own.

Doreen Cowin of the Child Care Providers Resource Network would also like the province to create a registry of home daycares.

“There is awesome care in the unlicensed care sector and parents would be better equipped to find them if there was accreditation and a registry,” she said.

The government’s legislation will need the support of at least one of the opposition parties to become law — something Sandals hopes to secure. “I would think that both opposition parties would be interested in expanding access to licensed child care and making sure where people don’t follow the rules, that we actually have a much-expanded ability to enforce the rules,” she said.

Although the Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats both said they wanted to review and digest the bill before saying whether or not they would support it, they agreed the changes are long overdue.

NDP leader Andrea Horwath said the Liberal government has ignored “warning bells that have been ringing loudly.”

“This is them coming too late to a crisis that’s been brewing for years and years.”