Education

Ontario municipal staff say $85.5M cut risks success of $10-a-day child-care program

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The municipal staff who administer the child-care system across Ontario are telling Education Minister Stephen Lecce that an $85.5-million cut to their budgets puts the success of the $10-a-day program at risk.

The Ontario Municipal Social Services Association says in a letter to the minister that the national program, which Ontario signed onto in 2022, has meant a significant amount of additional work for municipal child-care administrators and now is not the time to cut their funding.


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Ontario is the only province with a mandated role for municipalities in delivering child care and the system managers at municipalities have a central role in planning, funding and administering child-care services.

Their association says the $10-a-day program, which uses federal money to reduce fees for parents, has seen the municipal staff implement the new system that comes with more licensing, monitoring and regulatory work.

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The Ontario government announced in 2019 that instead of the province funding the administration of the child-care system, it was requiring municipalities to pay 50 per cent of that cost.

The province has since provided $220 million in transitional funding over several years, but that is now ending, resulting in an $85.5 million cut to municipal budgets.

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