Toronto urges province not to cancel funding for 3,000 new child-care spaces in schools

July 30, 2024 Canuck

With many families waitlisted for child care, the City of Toronto is urging the province’s education minister not to cancel funding that would create thousands of child-care spaces in schools. But the province says it’s simply moving funding elsewhere so projects can be built sooner.

Last week, city staff told councillors the province was cancelling funding for 48 previously approved child-care capital projects planned in Toronto’s public and Catholic schools. Those would have provided over 3,000 new child-care spaces.

On July 24, council voted to request the province reverse the cancelled funding. If the education minister declines, council is asking the province to let the school boards or the city have the money as “pooled funding” so they can build as many projects as possible.

The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) building at 5050 Yonge Street is pictured on Feb. 1, 2023. — The Toronto District School Board released a report this year that said many of the projects that face cancelled funding were planned for areas in the city with the highest demand for subsidized child care. (Michael Wilson/CBC)

Many of those projects were planned for areas with the highest demand for subsidized care, according to a January TDSB report, like Scarborough and northwestern parts of the city. At the time, the report found a lack of funding from the province was holding up ready-to-go projects.

“While these projects remain on paper, thousands of families with young children struggle to find access to quality child care in their communities,” the report said.

Tho Nguyen is experiencing it first-hand.

An expecting mother who’s due in January, she has already signed up to several waitlists for child care in Scarborough, but is worried she’ll now have fewer options.

“It’s devastating,” Nguyen said. “Even when I’m on 10 child-care waitlists, there’s no guarantee that I will get a spot when I need it. So these additional options would have been amazing.”

Province says money moving to speed up projects

Ontario’s Education Minister Todd Smith said Wednesday that funding for the new spaces isn’t being cancelled, but reallocated.

“We’re tired of waiting,” he said at a news conference, saying school boards weren’t building fast enough, despite approvals.

“There are proponents out there that are ready, willing and able to get shovels in the ground on those projects.

“So we’re simply reallocating the spaces so that we can get that built, so that the families that desperately need child care will be able to access those spaces in the very, very near future.”

A man stands at a podium at a school gym. — Todd Smith told reporters this week that funding isn’t being cancelled, but moved to operators who are ready to build new spaces immediately. He declined to answer whether those operators would be for-profit or non-profit. (Saloni Bhugra/CBC)

The TDSB’s January report blamed the province for delays, saying the ministry was slow to give the board approvals to proceed, adding that “the ministry’s benchmarks didn’t reflect current construction costs.”

The report found some estimated project costs would exceed provincial funding by up to 43 per cent.

TDSB trustee Matias de Dovitiis says the board has requested more funding from the province but has been turned down.

“That’s the price that the market is charging us,” he said. “We’ve designed them. They’re ready to go.”

He says the board has already spent public money on designs and applications that could now come to nothing.

For-profit vs. non-profit

In a letter to council, Toronto Child Care Advocates agreed the province wasn’t properly funding the non-profit projects.

“The Ontario government refuses to contribute major capital funding to build child care spaces in the non-profit and public sector,” Donna Spreitzer wrote on behalf of the advocacy group last week.

“Instead, it cut previously-approved capital projects and plans to accelerate expansion of private for-profit operators to fill the void.”

Smith did not say Wednesday whether funding would be reallocated to for-profit operators.

Earlier this month, Smith and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario wrote a letter to Jenna Sudds, Canada’s Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, asking that the province be allowed to create more for-profit child-care spaces. Under the province’s Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) agreement with Ottawa, a maximum of 30 per cent of CWELCC spaces can be operated by for-profit providers.

“Right now, Ontario’s for-profit operators are ready to step in and support the need for additional quality child care spaces but are being turned away solely because of their organization status hurting our ability to meet space creation targets and increase much-needed access for families,” the letter reads.

For Toronto, that target is about 18,000 new child-care spaces created between 2022 and 2026.

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