More than 3,000 new Toronto child care spaces at risk due to provincial cuts

Thestar.com
July 16, 2019
Laurie Monsebraaten

Thousands of new child cares spaces approved by the previous provincial government -- including 3,049 in Toronto -- may never get built due to the latest Ford government cuts.

A total of 51 new child care centres in schools across Toronto, slated to open between this fall and the fall of 2022, are no longer eligible for provincial operating funding, according to a staff report to be debated at city council this week.

The province will honour capital commitments to build the daycares only if cities and school boards promise to come up with the operating funds by Aug. 30, according to an April 26 education ministry memo to municipalities.

But cash-strapped cities and school boards can ill-afford to save the centres, said Toronto Councillor Mike Layton.

“The provincial government has been trying to hide the magnitude of the cuts to child care, to education and to our public health funding. This one is the latest and it’s just a sign of what’s to come,” Layton said Monday.

“In the middle of the year, we’re expected to come up with the money to demonstrate that these spaces will be funded. The reality is we don’t build child care that way,” added Layton, who represents Ward 11 University-Rosedale, where two new centres with space for 98 infants, toddlers and preschoolers may never get built.

Under the previous Liberal government’s plan to double the number of child care spaces for kids under age 4 by 2022, the province had promised to pay 100 per cent of operating costs.

“Now 100 per cent is being downloaded to municipalities,” Layton said.

City staff say it would cost about $35 million a year to cover child care subsidies and other operating grants if the 51 centres proceed without provincial support.

“At a time when our budgets are, at best, uncertain in this Conservative climate, it is going to be difficult,” Layton predicted.

Families are scrambling to find licensed care and more than 14,000 children are waiting for fee subsidies, he noted.

“This will again reduce the options parents have to return to work,” he added.

Layton questioned why the Ford government is cutting funding to child care in schools after promising in the spring budget to build 30,000 new child care spaces in schools within five years.

“It should come as no surprise the Conservatives are saying one thing and doing something completely different,” he said.

Education ministry officials were not available for comment Monday. But in their April 26 memo to municipalities, they noted the province is spending about $1.7 billion annually on licensed child care and early years programs. The Ford government has also said its new child care tax credit will give families with annual incomes of up to $150,000 an average of about $1,250 to spend on a wider variety of child care expenses starting this year.

Carolyn Ferns of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care said municipalities and school boards will be hard pressed to save the centres because their budgets were set when the province was still committed to covering the operating costs.

“The Ford government has just changed the rules in the middle of the game -- again,” she said.

The 51 centres under development -- many of them in underserved areas of Scarborough and Etobicoke -- would have provided child care spots for 490 infants, 975 toddlers and 1,584 preschoolers, Ferns noted.

Doug Ford’s riding of Etobicoke North could lose 225 spaces in three schools, she added.

Municipalities outside the Toronto area are also being hit, with a 49-space centre in the Caledon community of Palgrave in peril and centres in Norwood and Sudbury also at risk.

“Families are counting on these spaces being built,” Ferns said. “These are projects that are already underway. It’s a tremendous waste of money and time to scrap these spaces at this stage.”

The city’s economic and community development committee is recommending council ask the province to extend its Aug. 30 deadline to at least Oct. 31, to give city staff time to assess 2020 budget pressures and to prioritize the 51 projects.

But Ferns said the Ford government should just reverse the cuts and provide operating funding so the projects can go ahead.

At a Queen’s Park media conference last week, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath slammed the PC government for budget cuts “that just keep coming.”

“When Doug Ford cuts child care, every parent in every community faces a harder time finding care, or higher costs, or both,” she said.

Ontario is already Canada’s most expensive province for child care, Horwath noted, with Toronto parents paying more than $20,000 a year.