Parents of children in daycare in the area will likely finally start to see the effects of province’s daycare deal in August, according to a spokesperson for Waterloo Region.
In March, Premier Doug Ford finally struck a deal with the federal government to sign on to the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Plan (CWELCC), which will bring $10 a day daycare to Ontario.
The deal was expected to bring a 25 per cent reduction in daycare costs on May 1 but parents continue to wait.
At Wednesday night’s council meeting, a $24-million federal funding allocation from the CWELCC was approved for receipt by the council.
The region says the next step will be to get the reduction in place and increase the wages for the lowest-paid early childhood educators.
The spokesperson for the region told Global News that local child-care programs can begin applying for the program on June 30.
Once the operators have submitted the application, it will need to be processed before the funding can be distributed.
The region says operators must reduce their fees within 30 days of enrolling in CWELCC and will have 60 days to provide the retroactive fee reduction to parents.
“We anticipate that payments will start to flow to child-care programs starting in August, who will then provide the reductions to parents,” the spokesperson said.
— with files from Global News’ Gabby Rodrigues