OTTAWA — Ontario signed a $10.2 billion child-care deal with the federal government Sunday that will cut child-care fees in the province in half by the end of the year.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Doug Ford will announce the deal Monday in the Greater Toronto Area, according to sources from both governments with knowledge of the negotiations.
They all spoke to The Canadian Press on the condition they not be named due to the sensitive nature of the talks.
The Ontario deal is the last one needed to fulfil Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pledge to bring child-care fees down to an average of $10 a day in every province and territory by the end of 2026.
The 2021 federal budget earmarked $30 billion over five years to set up a long-promised but never delivered national child-care program.
Ontario was holding out for more money and while they didn’t get that, provincial sources say they secured more flexibility in when the funds are spent, which will allow them to hit the target of lowering fees to an average of $10 a day.
As well, they secured a review mechanism in year three that lets them provide an updated costing model and ask for more money to account for any shortfalls.
The five year child-care program was to include $1 billion for Ontario in year one, which is 2021-22. Since that fiscal year ends in four days, the federal government is allowing them more flexibility to push most of that spending into future years.
As part of the deal, Ontario will cut its fees an average of 50 per cent by the end of December, create 86,000 new spaces in child care by the end of the five years and set new minimum-wage floors for child-care workers of $18 an hour for staff and $20 an hour for supervisors.
Those wages will rise $1 an hour each year until the floor hits $25 an hour.
The spaces must be in licensed care and priority is to be given to public or not-for-profit spaces, but the agreement does not leave private, for-profit centres out entirely.
At least one fifth of Ontario’s child-care spaces are run by private, for-profit corporations, and some of the highest fees are charged in the province.
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives also reported that in 2019, Toronto had the highest median child-care fees for infants and toddlers, at $1,774 and $1,457 a month respectively.
Preschool fees were highest in Iqaluit $1,213, followed by Oakville, Ont., at $1,210 and Toronto at $1,207.
In Quebec, which created a universal child-care program in 1997, parents paid a median of $179 a month across all age groups.
The federal government estimated last year that cutting fees to an average of $10 a day in Ontario would save an average of $7,300 per child.
Ontario is the last province or territory to join the national plan. Seven provinces and Yukon jumped on board in July and August, before the federal election was called. Alberta joined in November, New Brunswick and Northwest Territories in December, and Nunavut at the end of January.
When the Nunavut deal was finalized Ford said an agreement with his government was “very, very close” but it took two more months to get it done.
One of Ontario’s biggest demands was an assurance the federal funding would not disappear after the initial five-year term, leaving provinces on the hook for very expensive programming.
There was already such a promise in the 2021 budget, which said the funding for this program after the initial five years would be $9 billion annually.
Provincial sources said they secured a sixth year of funding that gives Ontario “peace of mind” that the program won’t end after the life of the deal.
Ontario also wanted credit or additional funding to account for its $3.6 billion, full-day kindergarten program for children ages four and five. It’s one of the few provinces to have that, but Families Minister Karina Gould, who negotiated the deal for the federal government, was adamant that kindergarten was outside the scope of the negotiations.
Ottawa allotted each province a per-capita share of the budgeted funding for the child-care agreements based on the population of children in each province. That amounts to $10.2 billion for Ontario.
The deals share the aim of fees being an average of $10 a day by the end of the 2025-26 fiscal year, with an initial cut to fees of 50 per cent this year. But they also reflect the reality of individual provinces existing child-care programs, including in Quebec.
That province already has $8.50 per day spaces in regulated child-care centres, so its agreement was largely to expand and help fund that program, including 22,000 more spaces in it.
Across the board, the deals should add more than 250,000 subsidized, licensed child-care spaces across Canada within the next four years.
The federal official also said Gould has heard from more than one province that they are struggling to pay for expansions needed so child care centres can accommodate additional children. Discussions about funding child care infrastructure may be next but are not part of this deal, they said.
Susan Prentice, a sociology professor at the University of Manitoba and a member of the federal expert panel on early learning and child care, said making child care more affordable is a huge deal for parents.
She said that for some parents, it will open up the possibility of being able to afford child care at all.
But the cost is only one part of the puzzle of ensuring accessible, safe and quality child care, Prentice said and implementation will be key.
“A deal alone is just the first step.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 27, 2022.
Mia Rabson and Allison Jones, The Canadian Press
KAMLOOPS, B.C. – A 35-year-old man has been charged with second-degree murder after his mother’s body was found near her Kamloops, B.C., home a year ago.
Mounties say 57-year-old Jo-Anne Donovan was found dead about a week after she had been reported missing.
RCMP says its serious crime unit launched an investigation after the body was found.
Police say they arrested Brandon Donovan on Friday after the BC Prosecution Service approved the charge.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
TORONTO – Strength in the base metal and technology sectors helped Canada’s main stock index gain almost 100 points on Friday, while U.S. stock markets climbed to their best week of the year.
“It’s been almost a complete opposite or retracement of what we saw last week,” said Philip Petursson, chief investment strategist at IG Wealth Management.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 297.01 points at 41,393.78. The S&P 500 index was up 30.26 points at 5,626.02, while the Nasdaq composite was up 114.30 points at 17,683.98.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 93.51 points at 23,568.65.
While last week saw a “healthy” pullback on weaker economic data, this week investors appeared to be buying the dip and hoping the central bank “comes to the rescue,” said Petursson.
Next week, the U.S. Federal Reserve is widely expected to cut its key interest rate for the first time in several years after it significantly hiked it to fight inflation.
But the magnitude of that first cut has been the subject of debate, and the market appears split on whether the cut will be a quarter of a percentage point or a larger half-point reduction.
Petursson thinks it’s clear the smaller cut is coming. Economic data recently hasn’t been great, but it hasn’t been that bad either, he said — and inflation may have come down significantly, but it’s not defeated just yet.
“I think they’re going to be very steady,” he said, with one small cut at each of their three decisions scheduled for the rest of 2024, and more into 2025.
“I don’t think there’s a sense of urgency on the part of the Fed that they have to do something immediately.
A larger cut could also send the wrong message to the markets, added Petursson: that the Fed made a mistake in waiting this long to cut, or that it’s seeing concerning signs in the economy.
It would also be “counter to what they’ve signaled,” he said.
More important than the cut — other than the new tone it sets — will be what Fed chair Jerome Powell has to say, according to Petursson.
“That’s going to be more important than the size of the cut itself,” he said.
In Canada, where the central bank has already cut three times, Petursson expects two more before the year is through.
“Here, the labour situation is worse than what we see in the United States,” he said.
The Canadian dollar traded for 73.61 cents US compared with 73.58 cents US on Thursday.
The October crude oil contract was down 32 cents at US$68.65 per barrel and the October natural gas contract was down five cents at US$2.31 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was up US$30.10 at US$2,610.70 an ounce and the December copper contract was up four cents US$4.24 a pound.
— With files from The Associated Press
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD)
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida State has asked a judge to decide key parts of its lawsuit against the Atlantic Coast Conference without a trial, hoping for a quicker resolution and path to a possible exit from the league.
Florida State requested a partial summary judgment from Circuit Judge John Cooper in a 574-page document filed earlier this week in Leon County, the Tallahassee-based school’s home court.
Florida State sued the ACC in December, challenging the validity of a contract that binds member schools to the conference and each other through media rights and claiming the league’s exit fees and penalties for withdrawal are exorbitant and unfair.
In its original compliant, Florida State said it would cost the school more than half a billion dollars to break the grant of rights and leave the ACC.
“The recently-produced 2016 ESPN agreements expose that the ACC has no rights to FSU home games played after it leaves the conference,” Florida State said in the filing.
Florida State is asking a judge to rule on the exit fees and for a summary judgment on its breach of contract claim, which says the conference broke its bylaws when it sued the school without first getting a majority vote from the entire league membership.
The case is one of four active right now involving the ACC and one of its members.
The ACC has sued Florida State in North Carolina, claiming the school is breaching a contract that it has signed twice in the last decade simply by challenging it.
The judge in Florida has already denied the ACC’s motion to dismiss or pause that case because the conference filed first in North Carolina. The conference appealed the Florida decision in a hearing earlier this week.
Clemson is also suing the ACC in South Carolina, trying to find an affordable potential exit, and the conference has countersued that school in North Carolina, too.
Florida State and the ACC completed court-mandated mediation last month without resolution.
The dispute is tied to the ACC’s long-term deal with ESPN, which runs through 2036, and leaves those schools lagging well behind competitors in the Southeastern Conference and Big Ten when it comes to conference-payout revenue.
Florida State has said the athletic department is in danger of falling behind by as much as $40 million annually by being in the ACC.
“Postponing the resolution of this question only compounds the expense and travesty,” the school said in the latest filing.
The ACC has implemented a bonus system called a success initiative that will reward schools for accomplishments on the field and court, but Florida State and Clemson are looking for more as two of the conference’s highest-profile brands and most successful football programs.
The ACC evenly distributes revenue from its broadcast deal, though new members California, Stanford and SMU receive a reduced and no distribution. That money is used to fund the pool for the success initiative.
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