Ontario likely won’t meet its target of $10-a-day child care next year, the minister in charge of the file says, after a report from the auditor general highlighted a drop in enrollment for lower-income families and a funding shortfall.
Education Minister Paul Calandra said Wednesday he didn’t think the province would achieve its goal by early next year, unless the federal government ponies up more money.
“I don’t think frankly that we will be in the position to meet the $10-a-day program as set up by the federal government,” he told reporters, “unless they are willing to step up to the plate and add the money that is required.”
The admissions came as Calandra responded to a new report from Auditor General Shelley Spence on Wednesday, which determined that the Ford government spent the bulk of the $10.23 billion child-care funding it received from Ottawa over the course of four years, when the money was originally earmarked for five years.
That left a potential $1.95 billion shortfall in 2026, the AG said, pointing out the shortfall was unavoidable based on how quickly Ontario spent the money.
“If you start with the highest costs then you do take the funding and use it in four years instead of five, which is what it was given for, you can automatically see why you’d have that $1.95-billion deficit the next year,” she said Wednesday.
Spence added that, in her view, the $10 target was “a bit at risk” but was “still achievable” theoretically.
While the province expects the agreement between the federal government and Ontario to be extended for another five years, families could be facing increased costs for subsidized care.
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The auditor said child-care operators could face a shortfall of “at least $20 per space, per day,” pushing the fees for parents to an average of $32 per day.
“The Ministry has initially developed plans to deliver child-care funding to support the Agreement’s affordability, access, quality and inclusion objectives,” the auditor said in a special report, but added that the government’s efforts have fallen flat.
“We found that the systems and procedures in place to meet the targets by the end of the Agreement are not effective, and the commitments are at risk of not being met based on current projections and without changes to plans,” the auditor said.
Enrollment dropping for lower-income families
The report also found the number of lower-income families receiving subsidized daycare in Ontario has been decreasing, despite a national effort to achieve a $10-a-day child-care program.
Since 2022, the Ford government has been trying to implement a promise made by former prime minister Justin Trudeau to offer families across the country access to affordable childcare.
The program involves dramatically increasing child-care spaces to accommodate the increased demand, hiring new early childhood educators and balancing the need across the province with set funding from the federal government.
The auditor general found, however, that the province’s implementation of the program has led to fewer families having access to the cheaper spaces, saying the Ford government may have to “change its current plans” to achieve $10-per-day child care by 2026.
“The $10 a day is achievable, but the next day it may be a problem,” Spence said at a press conference.
Staffing and location challenges
Elsewhere, the auditor general highlighted concerns about how new spaces were being created.
When Ontario signed the child-care deal with the federal government in 2022, it agreed to create 86,000 new spaces within the system by December 2026, which the financial accountability officer has said would still leave the province short of meeting demand for more than 220,000 spots.
The province only achieved about 75 per cent of its interim space creation target at the end of 2024, Spence found.
Last fall the government reworked the way it assigned space creation targets in different regions of the province – instead of focusing on areas most in need of new spaces, it focused on areas that could more quickly create spaces, so Ontario had a better shot at meeting its overall target, the auditor said.
As well, while the number of registered early childhood educators in the system has increased, it’s still below the province’s target, and while the government estimated in 2022 that it would need 8,500 more ECEs by 2026, the auditor said that has now risen to 10,000.
— with files from The Canadian Press
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