Oakville councillors push for affordable child care

Thestar.com
Nov. 17, 2021

Oakville councillors Pavan Parmar and Janet Haslett-Theall tabled a motion at Monday night’s council meeting to make child care more affordable for residents.

“The pandemic has shown us how essential affordable child care is to our community,” Parm, councillor for Ward 7, began. “When we do not have accessible and affordable child care available, women drop out of the labour force.”

“This motion calls on our governments to work together to create a plan that will drive economic recovery and support working parents,” Parmar added.

For the most part, Oakville has many child care spaces available. According to Child Care Deserts, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ (CCPA) interactive map showing coverage of child care, most Oakville districts provide care for at least half of children ages zero to three.

One district appears to have a surplus of 1,079 spaces for 615 children. Only one district in Oakville has a low coverage rate of 35 per cent.

However, COVID has placed enormous pressures on the child-care sector. The CCPA published Sounding the Alarm in March of this year. The report measures the effects of the pandemic on child care across the country.

Between February and November of 2020, there was a 42 per cent drop in enrolment in Oakville child-care spaces, higher than Ottawa (35 per cent) and just lower than Edmonton with 43 per cent.

“The data clearly show that high fees are a driving force in how likely parents are to stop using child care,” reads the CCPA’s report. “This is especially well illustrated in the province of Quebec, where the operationally funded, low-fee centres are experiencing small enrolment drops, if any, whereas the tax-credit-funded, market-fee, for-profit centres are experiencing substantial enrolment drops.”

Quebec City, Laval, Longueuil, Gatineau and Montreal all have drops of between zero to 5 per cent. Ten per cent of Oakville’s care centres reported an increase in fees due to COVID-19.

The fees themselves in Oakville are some of the highest among those surveyed. Among the 37 cities making up the sample, Oakville’s median monthly fees in 2020 were the second most expensive for preschool-aged (between ages two and school-aged) children at $1,237. Toronto came in first at $1,250.

Oakville’s median monthly toddler (between 18 months and two and a half years) fee is at $1,280, placing them as sixth highest in the sample size. For fees regarding infant care, the town placed seventh at $1,454.

By comparison, in Longueuil, a city similar to Oakville in its population size, the median monthly fee is $181 for all categories.

In April of this year, the federal government promised $30 billion over five years toward affordable child care. The goal of the fund was to reduce fees by 50 per cent for regulated child care and an average of $10 per day for spaces.

“In my career as an HR professional, I’ve witnessed the incredible financial and emotional stress that families experience. All over getting quality affordable daycare,” said Councillor Haslett-Theall.

“Having enough quality and affordable child-care infrastructure enables families to make healthy personal choices.”