Ontario backs off proposed new child care regulations

In the wake of a parent outcry over proposed daycare changes, Education Minister Liz Sandals pledges to take another look at plan.

Thestar.com
April 13, 2016
By Laurie Monsebraaten and Robert Benzie

Parent outrage over proposed new child care regulations has prompted Education Minister Liz Sandals to reconsider the move.

“We have heard the concerns raised, and I want to be clear that the regulations, as posted, will not be implemented,” Sandals told the legislature Wednesday.

“We will be taking another look at some of the proposed regulations and will be engaging with ... the child care sector on a plan moving forward that makes changes to reflect the concerns that have been voiced,” she said.

Sandals clarified the province’s plans as Toronto’s community development committee discussed a staff report that said more than 2,000 infant and toddler spaces would be lost - and parent fees would skyrocket - if the original proposal had gone forward.

The minister has said the proposed changes were necessary to accommodate 12-month maternity leaves and full-day kindergarten, which weren’t in place when the current age groupings, group sizes and staff-child ratios were implemented.

But parents, daycare workers and academics were alarmed by provincial plans that would have seen 12-month-old babies cared for in toddler rooms and 2-year-olds moved into pre-school rooms with children as old as 5.

Toronto mother Lindsay Siple, president of the parent board at Plains Rd. Child Care Centre in the city’s east end, said she is relieved Sandals is withdrawing the regulations as drafted.

But she is worried about what Sandals will put in their place.

“We don’t want to see any changes to our age groups, group sizes and ratios. And it’s not clear that’s what she is saying,” Siple said.

Parents and child care workers want Sandals to stop tinkering with regulations and get serious about building a real child care system, said Carolyn Ferns of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, who was at city hall Wednesday to speak in support of the Toronto report.

“What we learned from the community’s response is that the ministry is trying to create child care regulations in a vacuum. They are trying to deal with issues of affordability, access and long wait lists by changing the regulations,” she said.

“But it is going to take a lot more to deal with Ontario’s child care crisis. We need them to be thinking much more broadly on a real child care system for Ontario at last,” she said.

This is the third time in six years that the province has tried - and failed - to make essentially the same changes to daycare age groupings, group sizes and staff-child ratios, noted child care expert Martha Friendly of the Childcare Resource and Research Unit.

“It’s a terrible policy process and a waste of everybody’s time,” she said. “It’s 2016. How long do we keep having to do this in the absence of a real plan or vision, goals or targets for child care in Ontario?”

Since 2003, the Liberals have doubled child care funding to more than $1 billion annually, Sandals told the legislature. The number of licensed child care spaces in Ontario has grown to nearly 351,000 spots, an increase of 87 per cent, she added.

The province is also creating 4,000 new child care spaces in schools under a $120-million three-year plan, she said.