Ontario and the federal government have agreed to extend the national affordable child-care program in the province for another four years, but it comes with no promises of further lowering the fees parents pay. The province is one of only two, including Alberta, that had not reached longer-term deals beyond the program’s initial five years, and securing funding until at least 2031 will give operators and parents some certainty. But what it may not do is see the program live up to its signature goal – lowering parent fees to an average of $10 a day. While about half of the provinces are offering average fees at that level, Ontario’s are an average of $19 a day, capped at $22. In its new four-year agreement with the federal government, Ontario has committed to maintain fees at that level until June 30, 2027. What happens after that is still up for discussion. The agreement provides stability for Ontario parents and child-care operators, federal Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hajdu said. “Obviously this has been a challenging piece of work, but it’s been an amazing piece of work,” she said in an interview. “There are still parents that are saving in Ontario about $9,000 per child, even with the rate being an average of $19.” The four-year agreement comes with $12 billion from the federal government, and on top of that Ontario will also get its share of an additional $5.4 billion for the national program that Hajdu announced earlier this year. The new money addresses Ontario’s fiscal hole, at least in the short term, Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra said. “(Minister Hajdu) understood that there was a massive shortfall in her program and came back with more money, and this allows us to at least get probably to the end of (2027) with the current fees that we’re at,” he said in an interview. “If they want to get down lower, then they’re going to have to provide significantly more dollars to do that. But this provides good stability for parents and for the operators. So I’m very happy with what she’s been able to accomplish.” Carolyn Ferns, policy coordinator for the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, said parents fought for $10-a-day child care, not an “endless” pause at $22. “While parents and operators may feel relieved today that the expiry of the agreement has been avoided for now, this deal is a deeply ill-judged compromise,” she wrote in a statement. Hajdu said parents have been telling her more often that availability is the more critical issue in child care. “What I hear more from Ontario parents, to be frank, is the need for additional spots and the need for the growth of the system overall,” she said Tuesday at a press conference. The province was supposed to have created 86,000 affordable spaces by this year under the deal with the federal government, but has so far fallen short at just shy of 60,000. Calandra said the province continues to work toward that target, aiming now to meet it by March 31 instead of the end of 2026. He expects a good deal of spaces to become available in the next year, as most new schools under construction have child care attached. Ontario’s financial accountability officer has estimated that the demand spurred by lower fees would put the need for new spaces closer to 220,000. Wait lists in some regions of Ontario have continued to grow, in some cases by several hundred per cent since before the national program sparked increased demand. Andrea Hannen, whose Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario represents both non-profit and for-profit centres, said long wait lists will persist, and that is by design. “People were told that the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program was a universal program, and it’s not,” she said in an interview. “It was never rolled out that way.” Operators are struggling under bureaucratic burdens, Hannen said, and that is limiting their ability to add more spaces. “It does that by controlling expenditures by licensees and imposing such burdensome reporting requirements that in many cases there’s barely enough money to keep a centre’s doors open, let alone expand,” she said. Lesley Davidson, president and CEO of the YMCA of Greater Toronto, said that in the GTA the YMCA has stabilized workforce shortages that were preventing it from opening more spaces, though other regions of Ontario are still facing challenges. Many operators have long said that the wages of early childhood educators need to be raised in order to recruit and retain more workers to not just keep existing spaces open, but to be able to add new ones. Amber Straker, Executive Director of the Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario, said Tuesday in a statement that it is disappointing the four-year extension does not come with any new wage improvements for ECEs. “You cannot expand child care spaces without educators to bring them alive, and modest wage improvements have not been high enough to address the workforce crisis,” she wrote. Ontario has raised the minimum pay for ECEs by $1 per hour each year through the initial child-care deal with the federal government, and the current wage floor is $25.86. Advocates have called for much higher wages, as well as a wage grid, pensions and benefits. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 29, 2026. Allison Jones, The Canadian Press
