Toronto council unanimously urges Ford government to abandon proposed changes to child-care system

Toronto.com
Nov. 30
David Rider

Toronto council is urging Premier Doug Ford’s government to abandon plans for controversial changes to Ontario’s child-care regulations.

“These changes are reckless,” city councillor Mike Layton said Thursday after voting 24-0 with council colleagues including Mayor John Tory to tell Ford to scrap the proposed reforms.

The proposals, posted to the government’s website on Oct. 2, arose from a scheduled five-year review of the Child Care and Early Years Act.

Under the revised rules, daycare operators could apply to the ministry to follow a new set of age categories. They include allowing infants and toddlers -- currently separated into 0-to-18-months and 18-to-30-months groups -- being kept together in a 0-to-24-months group.

Child-care providers could also lower staff-to-child ratios and increase group sizes for some age categories. The province says the goal is to boost daycare spaces and give providers more flexibility.

Staff taking care of kindergarten-age children would no longer have to belong to the industry’s self-regulating college. Non-qualified staff could backfill qualified staff for up to two weeks. Experience required for supervisor designation would including “general children’s programming,” rather than only licensed child care.

A City of Toronto staff report said: “Taken together, the changes would have a negative impact on quality, and would undermine efforts to raise the bar on the reputation of the profession of early childhood education.”

Earlier this month Shanley McNamee, the city’s general manager of children’s services, told a city committee that lowering the staff-to-child ration would put “more demands on an already struggling workforce” while decreasing the quality of child care and “potentially the health and safety of the children.”

Coun. Joe Cressy, chair of Toronto Public Health, said economic recovery from the pandemic depends on parents having access to safe and affordable child care.

Instead of “undermining” child care, the province should be investing in new affordable spaces “so that all parents can return to work,” Cressy said.

Coun. Michael Thompson voted with his colleagues to urge the Ford government to reconsider but said Ford himself is willing to listen to feedback.

“I have spoken directly with the premier with respect to this matter,” said Thompson, a one-time city council ally of Premier Ford and his brother, the late Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

“I can tell you that the premier is seized of this issue and is aware of the concerns that we have.”

But the Ford government gave no hint Thursday it’s reconsidering reforms despite the objections from Toronto and others including the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care and Association of Early Childhood Educators.

“Child care in this province remains expensive and inaccessible for too many parents,” a spokesperson for Education Minister Stephen Lecce told the Star.

“The status quo is not working for parents, especially with such disruption to the lives of the workforce through this pandemic,” so the government is consulting people with an aim to boost access and affordability, she said.

“That work will continue, in partnerships with all levels of government, to improve the child-care system, rather than defend the status quo that is simply not working for Ontario parents.”