The Greater Toronto daycare dilemma
Child care costs will be an issue for many voters in October’s election
Daycare is a major plank in the NDP’s bid to win next fall’s federal election. This week, longtime child-care champion Olivia Chow came out of political retirement to rally parents to the cause in the vote-rich Toronto area. We look at the state of daycare in the GTA, a key election battleground for the NDP. Toronto Outside Quebec, the Toronto oversees the largest child-care system in the country, boasting more than 940 daycare centres and 1,000 licensed homes.
But unlike Quebec, where most daycare is available to families for $7 per day, Toronto has the highest costs in the country. Care for infants run as high as $107 per day — or more than $27,000 a year.
Although daycare subsidies are available for more than one-third of the city’s licensed spaces, demand far outstrips supply. Toronto has the highest childpoverty rate in Canada and provincial funding for subsidies supports just 29 per cent of the city’s lowincome children under the age of 12. York York Region has one of the fastest-growing populations of children under the age of 12 in the country, increasing at a rate of about 100 per month.
But the province’s 2012 child-care funding formula, which ties money more closely to demographic trends, is beginning to address long-standing demand in the region, officials say.
The new cash has helped York reduce the subsidy waiting list by 40 per cent in the past year, says Cordelia Abankwa-Harris, the region’s general manager of social services. And for the first time in many years, York has been able to provide subsidies for all the lowest-income families on its waiting list, she says. Peel Toronto may have the country’s highest daycare costs, but Brampton has the least affordable child care when compared to women’s incomes. Fees are worth 36 per cent of a woman’s income according to a recent study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
To address affordability, Peel took a controversial decision in 2012 to close all 12 of its municipally operated daycares, some of the highestquality centres in the region. Staff argue the move has allowed the region to redirect those funds to clear its daycare subsidy waiting list. Halton An exodus of early childhood educa- tors to full-day kindergarten has left many Halton Region daycare programs scrambling for staff. This has made it difficult for centres to expand in fast-growing Milton, where demand for infant, toddler and preschool space is outstripping supply.
The region has three municipally operated daycare centres — two in Oakville and one in Georgetown — which provide high quality care by fully trained early-childhood educators. Halton hopes the $2-an-hour provincial wage grant being phased in for all Ontario daycare workers will help to address chronically low wages and keep more trained professionals in the field. Durham Durham Region has one of the GTA’s most comprehensive school-based child-care systems. Almost 80 per cent of elementary schools have licensed before- and after-school programs for children up to age12. Many have toddler and preschool care, and some offer infant care.
But affordability continues to be an issue in the region, with almost as many children waiting for subsidies as those being served.
“Our good news story is we are able to place 500 more children this year than we did last September,” says Roxanne Lambert, director of children services. Wait times, which used to be well over two years, are now down to 15 months.