Last month, the Toronto Star put out a lengthy article about the state of child care delivery in the GTA, and Toronto in particular. The article dug into some of the most problematic aspects of Ontario’s rollout of the Federal government’s $10-a-day child care program, which has already delivered cost reductions and will reduce child care costs to $10 per day by 2026. Dedicated E-Blast readers know that I always keep a close eye on child care as a former operator myself. Today, I want to unpack the numbers a bit because affordable childcare makes life more affordable for every generation of a family.
First, let’s look at the history of child care in Toronto. Since amalgamation in 1998, Toronto Children’s Services has been the City division that has coordinated our city’s entire child care system, including distributing needs-based subsidies from other orders of government across the not-for-profit system. Additionally, they provide a portion of Toronto’s child care spaces through City-run centres. Historically, parents’ fees have varied across the system but were continually increasing due to the rising cost of operation. Child care workers, the people who spend all day with our kids, were chronically underpaid to balance the books.
External factors have changed the child care landscape over the years. The biggest change came with the rollout of full-day kindergarten in 2014, reducing the number of children who needed care during school hours. I’ll compare some numbers from well after the dust settled following the introduction of full-day kindergarten to show the ways in which child care has changed in recent years. Let’s look at the numbers from 2018 to today, as we are now two years into the $10-dollar-a-day program rollout.
Toronto Children’s Services by the numbers:
2018 (Pre-$10-a-Day) | 2025 (Post-$10-a-Day) |
Supporting 990 child care centres across Toronto, including 52 City-run centres | Supporting over 1000 child care centres across Toronto, including 40 City-run centres (some City-run centres consolidated during the pandemic)Additionally supporting 3000 child care spaces in licensed in-home centres |
Coordinating 72,000 child care spaces | Coordinating 84,000 child care spaces |
Administering subsidies for 30,490 spaces | Administering subsidies for 30,700 spaces |
Gross budget (including subsidies from the Provincial government): $621.4 million | Gross budget (including subsidies from the Provincial government): $1.67 billion |
Net cost to the City (property-tax funded): $80.6 million (13% of the total budget for system management) | Net cost to the City (property-tax funded): $90.8 million (8% of the total budget for system management) |
Following the implementation of the $10-a-day program, the Toronto Children’s Services budget has grown by over $1 billion without any additional cost to your property taxes above inflation. We knew this program would require a great deal of support to roll out effectively, especially in Canada’s largest city with the highest number of child care centres. This program could not work without the system coordination and support provided by Toronto Children’s Services.
Presently, the $10-a-day program has capped daily fees at $22 (remember, this was planned to be a gradual program implementation with costs coming all the way down to $10-a-day by 2026). Even at this point in the rollout, the program has generated significant savings for families. Parents with children in participating centres are saving between 41% and 75% of costs per child—savings of over $1000 per month are not uncommon for families with multiple young children. At the same time, the Early Childhood Educators who care for our children will see their wages rise to $23.86 per hour this year, and $25.86 per hour by the end of 2026.
The benefits of this program can’t only be measured in direct cost savings, though those are truly life-changing for many Toronto families. The reduction of fees will allow subsidies to be redirected to the lowest end of the income scale. This will make child care accessible to families who could not afford it at all before, meaning more moms can pursue higher education, vocational training, and enter (or re-enter) the workforce, boosting our local economy.
There is one big problem created by the $10-a-day program: the need for more spaces. While the $10-a-day program promised capital funds for the creation of new child care spaces and facilities, the dollars for that portion of the program have yet to flow. The only new centres being built in Toronto are the result of community benefit funds collected from developers. In Don Valley North, we created a new child care centre at Parkway Forest Community Centre 12 years ago, and another will soon open at Ethennonnhawahstihnen’ Community Recreation Centre. Both of these centres were built with development funds. If we’re trying to meet the target of 86,000 new spaces in Toronto, a couple of centres opening in a ward every 12 years won’t cut it. Eight more centres are planned across the city but require additional funding to top up community benefit funds.
A big part of our issue creating new child care spaces has to do with our Provincial government’s unique ambition to grow participation in the $10-a-day program amongst private child care operators. The private, for-profit operators have been reluctant to join from the start, despite Toronto Children’s Services’ commitment to help them adjust to receiving public dollars. The accounting processes and needs for transparency and regular inspection are very different under the $10-a-day program, leading many for-profit centres to choose not to participate and others to try and drop out a little later. This may be a reason for the Province’s reluctance to flow the capital dollars needed to create more spaces.
Here’s my opinion after closely tracking child care throughout my time in government: The Provincial government should look at just how effective Toronto Children’s Services is at making child care more affordable for families in Toronto. Children’s Services is incredibly adept at creating new child care centres, managing relationships with school boards to provide seamless care for school-age children, and they do it all with system coordination costs at just 8%. For-profit centres will take longer to adapt to this new system, but parents need access to new spaces now. Municipal coordinators like Toronto Children’s Services are simply better positioned to quickly produce more spaces at a low cost.
Moreover, “for-profit” is simply a term used to describe a certain type of business license. These centres don’t have access to the conditions that facilitate expansion, even when funding is made available. If you currently have a child or grandchild in a private, for-profit child care centre, it’s important to know that most of those centres struggle to make ends meet in the same way not-for-profit organizations do. Child care is always an under-capitalized labour of love. I’m confident that many for-profit centres will find their way to participating in the $10-a-day program over time, but it will be a journey.
In the meantime, we need to create more child care spaces as quickly as possible. The $10-a-day child care program is a game changer for families across Canada and a boon to our local economy as parents enter and re-enter the workforce. So I say to our Provincial Minister of Education Jill Dunlop: We can do more. If you let your largest city have its share of the capital that has been promised but not delivered, we’ll give you serious bang for your buck. Toronto Children’s Services can create more spaces, shrink waitlists, and do all the coordination necessary to provide much-needed child care spaces to Toronto families. Let us get to work to make life more affordable for families.