Ontario weakened its $10-a-day child care funding rules. Now the federal government is demanding answers – and a public meeting with the province’s child care workers.
The province’s “child care levy” is a flat-rate collection system that’s imposed on many Ontario child-care spaces across the province. The levy is a major source of funding for early childhood education and child care, which means every day that Ontario’s child-care levy is on the books, families have less money to spend on child care and education.
In 2017, the federal government imposed a cap on the annual revenue that could be collected by the province’s child care levy in order to offset increases in Ontario’s child care costs. (That cap was lifted in the province’s 2019 budget.)
The new cap is set to increase the Ontario rate of the province’s child care levy by 25 per cent from October 2020 to October 2021, according to a recent report by the auditor general. When that happens, the maximum daily income that a child care worker can earn in a year when using Ontario’s child care levy will drop by $3.50 in the year ending October 2021.
However, Ontario’s Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services (MCSS), said the cap won’t apply to the levy if at least one day of public child care is provided outside of Ontario in any given year.
Earlier this year, the ministry wrote to parents who currently use child care outside of Ontario to inform them that the cap won’t apply to child care provided outside of Ontario. The letter also warned parents whose children currently live in Ontario that Ontario’s child care levy won’t count as public early childhood education or child care in 2017.
According to the ministry, the cap won’t apply to the levy if at least one day of public child care is provided outside of Ontario in any given year. 0:56
The Ontario Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services (MCSS) has been clear that the cap won’t apply to the province’s child care levy. However, Ontario families will still have to choose between two funding options:
Provide their child care to the province. Provide their child care to a private provider.
Providing children with child care to a private provider is
