Toronto pays the price with high child-care fees
Report finds costs are the largest in the country, as advocates call for Ottawa to take action
Child-care fees across Canada are high and rising, particularly in Toronto, and advocates say the federal government should take action to lessen the burden on families that are struggling to cover the costs.
A new study from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives finds that child-care costs are highest in Toronto, where the median monthly cost of full-day care for an infant is $1,736.
The increasing fees are tantamount to “a second mortgage,” said Carolyn Ferns, public policy co-ordinator with the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care.
“It’s something that I don’t think we can afford to ignore anymore.” For a child between the ages of 11⁄ and 3 years, the
2 median monthly cost of child care is $1,325; parents of children aged 3 to 5 can expect to pay $1,033 for a month of care, the study found.
Using federal data from 2010 for families in which the youngest child is under 6 and adjusting for inflation, the centre says a Toronto family with a median income can expect to spend 48 per cent of their after-tax income on child care for two children.
Subsidies for low-income families can help make child care more affordable — at least in theory.
“Once subsidies are counted, the cities in Ontario where child care would otherwise be most expensive become the least expensive, with fees of $87 a month,” the authors write.
The catch, co-author David Macdonald said, is that a family’s eligibility for a subsidy does not guarantee they will receive it.
The Star has reported that there are roughly 17,000 children waiting for child-care subsidies in Toronto. Proving eligibility can be onerous, Macdonald said, and approval only guarantees you a spot in line behind 17,000 others.
Not only are spaces scarce, but fees are climbing as well.
The study, which focused on licensed child care, found that “fees have increased by 5 per cent on average,” well above the rate of inflation.
In Toronto, monthly fees have jumped by $56 since last year, the largest cash spike in Canada.
Kitchener and Windsor saw 3-per-cent decreases in monthly fees, the study notes.
For Safra Najeemudeen, a Ryerson graduate student in Markham, child-care costs are a fact of life, like paying rent.
“You just have to suck it up,” said the mother of two. “And whatever it is, you just have to live with it.”
Najeemudeen’s children attend child care before and after school at Mount Joy Public School.
The cost for each child is about $375 a month, Najeemudeen said.
She believes a cultural shift is necessary to ensure people view raising children as a societal responsibility and not an individual one.
“Eventually, they are going to support the entire society,” Najeemudeen said. “The main thing is . . . how children are viewed and how they’re not valued in society.”
The study also highlights the low pay among childcare workers.
Low wages for workers, high fees for parents and the irrefutably high cost of providing child care point to a need for greater government involvement, Ferns said.
“If you’re going to pay the workforce decently and you’re going to have affordability for parents . . . we need to have more government intervention. We need to have more government funding for child care,” Ferns said.
Child-care costs “were lowest across all age categories in the cities of Gatineau, Laval, Montreal and Longueuil and Quebec City,” the study notes, “since the Quebec government caps fees and subsidizes the difference in costs.”
“That appears to be the most-effective way of reducing fees,” said Macdonald, who believes a similar plan nationwide would keep fees low. “What it means, in essence . . . is that it’s only really in Quebec that parents can afford to raise children.”
Quebec has recently changed its child-care system to charge families according to income.
The study suggests “federal co-ordination and funding” would lower costs and increase availability.
Martha Friendly, executive director of the Childcare Resource and Research Unit, believes the government’s role should be a nuanced one. “What we need is more money. We also need more policy,” said Friendly, who co-authored the centre’s 2014 study on child care.
“It’s not just producing more shoes. It’s a social program that has a lot of components.”
This includes answering questions about staffing and maintaining good quality, Friendly said.
“The lack of policy driving even the money that there is makes it inefficient. It’s in fits and starts and, we always say, a patchwork.”