Ninety-two per cent of licensed child care providers in Ontario have signed up for the national $10-a-day child care program, according to The Canadian Press.
November 1 was the deadline for providers to decide – it had been extended from the original September 1 date to try to get more take-up – and government sources say just 7% decided to opt out, while one per cent did not. decision
Government sources say a lot of money has already started being returned to parents to reduce some of the fees they have paid since April.
Parents are set to receive discounts of up to 25 percent retroactive to April 1, and a further 50 percent reduction in fees, on average, until the end of the year. Fees are set to drop to an average of $10 a day by September 2025.
Childcare centers that have not decided either way can still opt in until the end of the year in 2022, which is also the deadline to opt-in for the next year of the program, the sources said.
The government is now drawing up a discussion paper aimed at creating a new funding formula for the scheme for 2024 and beyond, and plans to launch a consultation on how to create tens of thousands more childcare places as well as recruit and retain more staff.
Carolyn Ferns, the policy coordinator for the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, recently said the government needs to develop a cost-based funding formula with a budget submission process.
“I think they really need to make these consultations as open and transparent as possible,” he said.
“We need to get stronger accountability measures. I mean, it’s billions of dollars of public funding and we need it to be really, absolutely non-negotiable that it’s being spent properly. So I think that’s going to be the challenge for her next year.”
The Department of Education has made some changes to the funding model for this year and next to try to ease concerns – mainly from for-profits – about the ability of agencies to choose and continue to operate their businesses. The changes brought in a simple ‘revenue replacement’ model, meaning that once parents saw their fees halved, operators would receive that amount from the government to top them up.
The department removed previous language about limiting “undue” profits and a list of ineligible expenses, such as property tax, that worried some operators that they wouldn’t have enough money to make those payments if they participated in the program, and the their income from the parent company cut fees.
