Funding for child-care centres in city schools at risk without provincial funding

Thestar.com
June 27, 2019
Jennifer Pagliaro

The future of city payments to maintain parents’ costs for child care at centres located in schools across Toronto is up in the air after city staff prepared to cancel all grants, effective next year.

The decision is now up to council after Councillor Joe Cressy (Ward 10 Spadina-Fort York) moved to halt the plan to end the grants at committee on Wednesday.

Cancelling the grants with no other government funding would mean parents currently paying full fees could see an increase of more than $300 more per child per year, starting in 2020. The grants would affect more than 18,000 children.

“With already the highest fees for licensed child care in all of Canada -- parents in this city simply can’t afford this,” Amy O’Neil, child-care director at the Treetop Children’s Centre, which is located at a school in midtown, told the committee. She called the current situation a “crisis.”

City staff submitted a report to the economic and community development committee, which was not subject to council’s approval, rather was simply for information. That report said that as per previous council decisions, the bridging funding for licensed child-care centres located in 349 schools across four school boards would end as of Jan. 1, 2020, and schools would be notified of the cancellation of payments as of August.

The occupancy grants have been contentious since 2017, when council was struggling to balance the city’s budget. At that time, Mayor John Tory supported a cut to what are called occupancy grants -- money the city provides to school boards that subsidizes the child care centres’ rent and lowers their overall operations costs.

But following public outcry from parents and advocates, that contemplated cut was reversed.

“Asking people to pay more for child care, right now, is not reasonable and it’s not right,” Tory said then of the reversal.

In July 2017, council requested the province cover the occupancy grants being paid by the city as part of the full continuum of learning. Council also approved a “bridging strategy” to fund the grants in 2018 and 2019, staff said Wednesday. The funding was $5.82 million in 2019, which the city used reserves to fund, the staff report said.

The province, however, has not come forward with any funding.
Though city staff previously reported the continuation of the grants would be considered as part of the 2020 budget cycle and that “city council will need to decide if the city should continue to fund this support or find an alternative funding source,” the staff report before committee on Wednesday only informed committee members the grants would be cut.

That unilateral decision by staff came under questioning by Cressy, who moved a successful motion that the funding be extended from Jan. 1, 2020, until the budget process for 2020, where council would determine how to proceed. That temporary plan will now be considered by council next month.

“Child care should be affordable. That’s it,” Cressy said, regardless of whether parents pay full fees or not. “Under no circumstances am I prepared to tell the 18,000 kids and their families that effective Jan. 1 their child-care fees are going up because this city terminated an agreement. Not acceptable.”

O’Neil said she was shocked eliminating the grants was even being considered. Her centre alone, she said, would see an increased operating pressure of $40,000 in 2020 if their grant was cancelled.

The cancellations would not affect parents receiving subsidies to afford a child-care space, staff reported. However, there are currently 15,000 people on the waitlist for subsidized child-care spaces, staff said Wednesday, without enough funding to meet the demand. Those parents either currently pay full fees they can’t afford or are relying on alternative child-care strategies.