Ontario promises child care relief

CTV Ottawa: Relief for licensed child care CTV’s Eric Longley has details on an announcement from the province creating thousands of subsidized spaces for licensed child care.

It should soon become easier to find subsidized, licensed daycare in Ontario.

In a pre-budget announcement, Finance Minister Charles Sousa said the province plans to earmark over $200-million to increase licensed child care and make it more affordable.

The plan includes spaces for 24,000 more children up to four years old in the 2017-2018 fiscal year. It is the first step of a 2016 Throne Speech promise to create 100,000 spaces across the province in five years.

60% of those spaces will be subsidized.

It’s welcome news for a province that has some of the highest child care costs in the country. The problem is quite often not a lack of daycare spaces, but a lack of parents who can afford them.

“It is, I think In a word, desperate,” says Sebastian Ronderos-Morgan, President of the Board at Wellington Daycare in downtown Ottawa. “It’s a pretty serious situation right now in, what I understand, all of Ontario but certainly in Ottawa.”

Ronderos-Morgan says available subsidies have not kept up with demand, to the point where parents who have put an older child in daycare can’t do the same with a younger sibling, even though their economic situation hasn’t changed.

His main concern about the latest funding announcement is that it needs to lead to a more long-term strategy to address the cost of child care. “The announcement today is important. My fear is that it might just be another band-aid. What we probably need in Canada and certainly in Ontario is something more comprehensive,” he says.

The provincial announcement includes a promise to “develop a child care affordability strategy” in the coming months.