Ontario should focus more on creating child-care spaces than $10-a-day goal: expert

TORONTO — As Ontario awaits a promised infusion of money from the federal government for the national child-care program, one prominent expert is arguing that the province should focus more on new spaces than getting to the $10-a-day target.

Federal Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hajdu announced last week that an additional $5.4 billion would go to provinces and territories over two years for child care, though the money is being viewed as sustaining the system and not necessarily getting the program much closer to its goals.

The government set ambitious targets for reducing the fees parents pay to $10 a day on average, and creating hundreds of thousands of new spaces by this year, but they have not been met in many jurisdictions. Fees in Ontario are at about $19 on average and about 54,000 new spaces have been created within the program since 2019, the province said, short of the goal of 86,000.

Ontario’s financial accountability officer has estimated that the demand spurred by lower fees would put the need for new spaces closer to 220,000.

While many provinces recently signed five-year extensions to the program with the federal government, Ontario signed on for just one more year, as it continues to negotiate with the federal government for more funding. It has said there is a shortfall of $2 billion per year and it can’t lower fees to $10 without more money.

Education Minister Paul Calandra said he can’t yet say if the new $5.4 billion over two years is viable for Ontario until he knows the specific amount the province will receive.

“Ontario has long been clear that current funding levels are not sufficient to support the long-term sustainability of the child care program,” he wrote in a statement.

“It is critical that the federal government provide an appropriate funding package by September in order to sustain the federal child care program in Ontario.”

When it comes to further reducing fees or adding more spaces, expanding the system’s capacity to serve more families is the more urgent need, says Gordon Cleveland, an Ontario-based child care policy expert and supporter of universal child care.

“It’s not that expansion is more important than affordability,” said Cleveland, who specializes in the economics of child care. “You’ve got to have the two together, but in terms of where does my next dollar go, my next dollar should go to expansion.”

Cleveland said as much in pre-budget submissions to the federal government recently, arguing that Ottawa should add $4 billion to $6 billion per year to increase the availability of spaces and let the five provinces that have not yet reached $10 a day, like Ontario, get there more slowly.

“Not only does early learning and child care deliver very substantial economic benefits to mothers and families, it also delivers very substantial fiscal benefits to governments,” he wrote, citing recent studies.

“These benefits depend on continuing to grow the child-care system, making it available to all families.”

One of the largest barriers to expanding more quickly is staff shortages, operators have said for years. The YMCA says it is licensed to operate about 98,700 spaces across Canada, but only has about 67,800 open due to a shortage of 3,750 staff.

Early childhood educators, advocates and some operators have said Ontario needs to do more to recruit and retain ECEs. The province instituted a wage floor, but there are calls for those wages to be higher and for Ontario to implement a wage grid, pensions and benefits, as some other provinces have.

The College of Early Childhood Educators has found that ECEs in licensed child care are twice as likely to resign after three years compared to colleagues working in other settings such as schools.

Amber Straker, the executive director of the Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario, said better compensation packages make early childhood education appealing as a career and not just a job.

“(We need) to create a system in which educators are not popping in, working for a year, two years, maybe three, and then leaving the system, but instead to create a system where educators are coming into jobs that unfurl into lifelong careers, where they’re able to see their pay increase over time and with experience, and where they’re able to feel that recognition of the incredibly important work that they do,” she said.

Ontario’s auditor general has estimated that the province is short about 10,000 ECEs. Senior Ministry of Education staff told a legislative committee late last year that the actual shortage is around 4,500 because many ECE roles are being filled by non-ECE staff.

Morna Ballantyne, executive director of advocacy group Child Care Now, said there needs to be progress on affordability and expansion at the same time, without giving priority to one over the other.

“To transform the system, as was promised in 2021, provincial governments have to … do three things simultaneously and use their money and plan accordingly,” she said.

“One is to make it more affordable, to bring down fees to an average of $10 a day. They have to expand supply and they have to address the workforce shortages, and if you don’t do all three at the same time, then you end up with an inequitable system and a poor result.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 26, 2026.

Allison Jones, The Canadian Press