Toronto most expensive in Canada for daycare: report

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says numbers suggest need for government to invest in a more affordable child-care system Canada-wide

Thestar.com
Dec. 10, 2015
By Stephen Spencer Davis

Child care fees across the country are high and getting higher, particularly in Toronto, and advocates say the federal government should take action to lessen the burden on families that are struggling to cover the costs.

A new study from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives finds that child care costs are highest in Toronto, where the median monthly cost of full-day care for an infant is $1,736.

The increasing fees are tantamount to “a second mortgage,” said Carolyn Ferns, public policy coordinator with the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care. “It’s something that I don’t think we can afford to ignore anymore.”

For a child between the ages of one-and-a-half and three years, the median monthly cost of child care is $1,325; parents of children aged three to five can expect to pay $1,033 for a month of care, according to the study.

Using federal data from 2010 for families in which the youngest child is under six and adjusting for inflation, the CCPC says a Toronto family with a median income can expect to spend 48 per cent of their after-tax income to pay for a year of child care for two children.

Subsidies for low-income families can render expensive child care affordable—at least in theory.

“Once subsidies are counted, the cities in Ontario where child care would otherwise be most expensive become the least expensive, with fees of $87 a month,” the authors write.

The catch, co-author David Macdonald said, is that a family’s eligibility for a subsidy does not guarantee that they will receive it.

The Star has reported that there are roughly 17,000 children waiting for child care subsidies in Toronto. And proving eligibility can be an onerous task, Macdonald said, that guarantees you nothing but a spot in line behind 17,000 others.

And not only are spaces scarce, but fees are climbing as well.

The study, which focused on licensed child care, found that “fees have increased by 5 per cent on average,” well above the rate of inflation. In Toronto, monthly fees have jumped by $56 since last year, the largest cash spike in Canada.

Kitchener and Windsor saw 3 per cent decreases in monthly fees, the study notes.

For Safra Najeemudeen, a Ryerson graduate student in Markham, child care costs are a fact of life, like paying rent.

“You just have to suck it up,” said Najeemudeen, a mother of two. “And whatever it is, you just have to live with it.”

Najeemudeen’s children attend child care before and after school at Mt. Joy Public School. The cost for each child is around $375, Najeemudeen said.

Najeemudeen believes a cultural shift is necessary to ensure people view raising children as a societal responsibility and not an individual one.

“Eventually, they are going to support the entire society,” Najeemudeen said. “The main thing is...how children are viewed and how they’re not valued in society.”

The study also highlights the low pay among child care workers. Low wages for workers, high fees for parents and the irrefutably high cost of providing child care point to a need for greater government involvement, Ferns said.

“If you’re going to pay the workforce decently, and you’re going to have affordability for parents, right, we need to have more government intervention. We need to have more government funding to child care,” Ferns said.

“That appears to be the most effective way of reducing fees,” said Macdonald, who believes a similar plan nationwide would keep fees low. “What it means, in essence...is that it’s only really in Quebec that parents can afford to raise children.”

Quebec has recently changed its child care system to charge families according to their income.

The study suggests “federal coordination and funding” would lower costs and increase availability. Martha Friendly, executive director of the Childcare Resource and Research Unit, believes the government’s role should be a nuanced one.

“What we need is more money. We also need more policy,” said Friendly, who co-authored the CCPC’s 2014 study on child care. “It’s not just producing more shoes. It’s a social program that has a lot of components.”

This includes answering questions about staffing and maintaining good quality, Friendly said.

“The lack of policy driving even the money that there is makes it inefficient,” Friendly said. “It’s in fits and starts and, we always say, a patchwork.”