Parents and providers welcome extension to child-care cost program, but say more work is needed

The Ontario government has secured a one-year extension to keep child-care costs down. CTV’s Heather Senoran explains.

Parents and child-care providers say they are pleased the Ontario government has secured an extension to try to keep daycare costs down, but there is still more work to do.

On Tuesday, the provincial government announced it had received a one-year extension from the federal government for the national $10-a-day child-care program. It is an initiative that lowers the cost for parents, with a goal of eventually getting that price down to $10 a day.

Currently, the average cost sits at $19 a day in Ontario. The program had been set to expire on March 31.

“I think it’s great that there’s a one-year extension, but I think there needs to be more than a one-year extension,” Kylie Whyte said. Whyte currently has a child at Rising Ontario Early Learning Ontario’s St. Patrick Catholic School centre in Kitchener,

Whyte said it wasn’t easy to get a daycare spot. She is currently on maternity leave and is happy that her youngest will soon also have a place to go.

“We went through several care providers before we ended up here,” she said.

Lori Prospero, CEO of Rising Oaks, said the extension is also good for providers and staff.

“It really is good news for the sector at large. It safeguards the momentum that we built in the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program,” Prospero told CTV News.

Prospero noted it was hard to plan for the future when it was uncertain if the program would be extended.

“We have a couple of expansion projects here at Rising Oaks that it was creating some risk [for] in terms of whether those projects would be disrupted,” Prospero said.

With the extension, fees won’t rise for at least 12 more months.

Prospero hopes the next 12 months are used wisely to keep the system sustainable.

She suggested a wage grid for early childhood educators to help keep staff.

“That’s just one of the key pieces that we need to focus on. The other would be, infrastructure funding to support building those new spaces and helping to reduce the red tape in those processes,” Prospero said. “[There’s] work to be done over these 12 months. But [it’s] a good start for sure,” she said.

The one-year extension for Ontario comes with $695 million in additional funding from Ottawa. Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra said that means fees won’t rise next year, but it isn’t enough for fees to be further lowered toward $10 a day.

Earlier this year, most Ontario daycare costs were capped at $22 a day.

“I think we pay $22 a day. But if it was $10 a day, it would definitely help. Everything’s becoming more and more expensive right now,” said Whyte.

With files from The Canadian Press