BY ANDREA HANNEN
This week, the Provincial Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs received submissions from stakeholder groups offering input on Ontario’s spring budget.
These public consultations allow MPPs and citizens to work together to improve the performance of taxpayer spending.
The Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario (ADCO) was one of the groups that made a formal submission. ADCO represents Ontario’s independent licensed child care centres — those not run by a public sector organization such as a municipality or a school board, or a quasi-public sector organization such as a YMCA.
Most independent licensed child care centres are small businesses run by women. One of the things that distinguishes these child care providers from municipalities, school boards and quasi-public sector agencies is their ability to create new licensed child care spaces without burdening taxpayers with the cost of expansion.
Both the McGuinty and Wynne governments seemed to see these small businesses as barriers to the growth of institutional child care. That’s what the Full-Day Kindergarten program (FDK) was all about. It also seems to be what prompted the Wynne government to enact the Child Care and Early Years Act (CCEYA), which allows municipalities to limit the supply of licensed child care within their boundaries, so that parents have fewer alternatives to these institutional settings.
A 2019 report by the Ministry of Education reveals that some 2000 of Ontario’s licensed child care centres closed between 2008 and 2018.
In recent weeks, the impact of these closures has been felt by tens of thousands of Ontario parents as they struggled to find alternative care arrangements for their children when strikes by teacher unions shut down not only FDK but also licensed child care centres and before-and-after-school programs located in public schools.
For this reason alone, the Ford government should stop investing taxpayer dollars in school-based child care spaces.
It should also do so for financial reasons.
Currently, municipalities and school boards may receive anywhere from $30,000 to $60,000 per space to create more child care. Yet, independent licensed child care owner/operators are able to create similar, if not better, facilities for half this amount and they do it at no cost to taxpayers. All they need is assurance from the Province that it is safe for them to invest in expansion.
The province can provide this assurance by:
– Amending the Child Care and Early Years Act (CCEYA) with an eye to eliminating the provincial red tape and municipal conflicts of interest that make it harder for new independent licensed centres to open;
– Creating an online, self-serve portal where parents can explore, calculate and/or apply for the various child care funding support options available to them without having to consult with a municipal bureaucrat;
– Expanding the CARE tax credit so that more families qualify for it and fewer are forced into the chaos and uncertainty of the Provincial fee subsidy system, which is run differently by every municipality;
– Respecting parental choice by ensuring that fee subsidies follow children to whatever licensed child care programs their parents choose to use;
– Simplifying the Provincial funding formula used to allocate child care dollars to municipalities, so that less taxpayer money winds up being diverted into needless municipal overhead instead of actually helping families.
Currently, the province invests more than $3 billion annually into FDK and municipal child care system management. This investment needs to yield a better return.
At minimum, it should serve more families and be more responsive to their needs. It should also help shield children’s early years from the whims of big labour.
To achieve these goals, the province needs to stop burdening taxpayers with the cost of licensed child care expansion and start focusing on policy reforms that will enhance parental choice by increasing small business investment in the sector.
— Andrea Hannen is Executive Director of the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario (ADCO)
