'A big bombshell': Toronto parents scrambling to find child care after daycares warn of huge fee hikes in January

Children's backpacks and shoes are seen at a daycare franchise, in Langley, B.C., on May 29, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Parents with children at two west-end daycares say they are scrambling to find alternative child-care arrangements after their centres informed them that fees are set to more than double in the New Year.

Melissa Bruno told CP24 on Tuesday that she recently received a letter from Sunnyside Day Care, the Roncesvalles centre where her son attends preschool, informing her that in January, the facility will be withdrawing from the national $10-a-day childcare program, which has reduced parent fees by more than 50 per cent since it was implemented in 2022.

The change, she said, will mean her family will have to fork over nearly $1,200 more a month as the tuition for her son’s preschool spot jumps from around $900 to $2,090 a month on January 1.

“They know that they have parents between a rock and a hard place,” Bruno said, noting that it is very difficult to get into other daycares due to lengthy waitlists.

“It’s one thing if our daycare just never agreed to go into the program in the first place, but… we made life decisions based off the budget and the math as it was.”

In the letter sent to parents, which CP24 has reviewed, the centre provided details of the new fees parents would be facing.

It explained that daycares participating in the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) program were restricted from introducing fee increases over the past two years and based on “deferred annual increases relative to inflation,” new monthly fees for full-time programs will be $2,565 for infant spaces, $2,310 for toddler spots, and $2,090 for preschool spaces.

The letter went on to mention that part-time spaces are also available for parents who no longer want to send their children full-time.

Parents have until Nov. 30 to withdraw their child from care before the New Year, according to the letter.

“For our families that choose to find alternative childcare arrangements, we will miss you,” the letter read. “As a final note, hope remains, and perhaps CWELCC will continue to evolve and return in a new and improved way.”

CP24.com reached out to the centre for comment but did not hear back.

While Bruno said the daycare sent out a letter at the end of October warning of the possibility that they may pull out of the $10-a-day program, she is still not totally clear why they can’t make the federal program work.

Bruno, who is currently on maternity leave, said the fee increases are forcing she and her partner to have conversations about whether she can return to work after 12 months.

“This is the exact reason why people make decisions about not going back into the workforce because your child-care fees basically cancel out the wages that you would take home,” she said, noting that her daughter is also on a waitlist to attend Sunnyside.

She said she and other families are discussing the possibility sharing a nanny as a “stop gap measure.”

“I don’t know many families that can afford an additional $1,000 a month,” she said.

New daycare spots ‘impossible’ to find    

Josh Friedman said he too was recently told that his High Park daycare Teddy Bear Academy would be pulling out of CWELCC in January.

“We just moved into the area about a year ago. It took us forever to get a new daycare,” he said.

“We got a spot near here and we're just elated that we can walk… It was all kind of working out and this was a big bombshell for us.”

He said he felt both angry and disappointed after receiving the letter from the centre, informing him that parent fees would be more than doubling in January.

He said they are currently assessing their options for child care for their toddler.

“Where are we going to magically get another, what is it, $1500 or $1400 a month,” he asked.

“We're just going to have to grin and bear it or find a home daycare… or get lucky and find another spot, which is nearly impossible.”

Teddy Bear Academy did not respond to CP24’s request for comment.

In August, the province announced that it would be moving to a new funding model for the national $10-a-day program, switching from a revenue replacement model to a cost-based model starting January 1.

The funding formula will offer benchmark funding based on the average cost in each region and also offer legacy top-ups if daycares have higher costs. In lieu of profit or surplus, the province will also offer additional funding.

Then-education minister Todd Smith said the changes would give operators more “flexibility” with how to allocate spending. The province also announced that it would be capping parent fees at $22 a day across Ontario starting in January.

The funding formula change was well-received by many non-profit centres in the sector, Carolyn Ferns, the policy coordinator for the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, previously told CP24.

But some for-profit centres have said that the new funding structure will not give them sufficient autonomy to run their centres how they see fit.

About 70 per cent of the daycares in Ontario are non-profit as the number of private, for-profit centres has been capped at 30 per cent.

Andrea Hannen, the executive director of the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario (ADCO), which represents hundreds of independent daycares in the province, said this is not a decision any operator wants to make.

“The process of figuring out how this new funding formula is going to impact your centre is really pretty complicated,” she told CTV News Toronto on Monday.

“That will be something that that owner/operator thought long and hard about, was probably very worried about, (and) didn’t want to do.”

Dozens of daycare operators and staff attended a rally at Queen’s Park last month, urging the provincial government to pause the implementation of the funding formula to allow for further consultation with private operators.

Sally Shapiro, owner and supervisor of Tower Hill Child Care Centre in Richmond Hill, told CP24 at the rally that operators are concerned about the quality of care.

“After this program comes into place as of January, the quality of care in our daycares is going to diminish,” she said last month.

Situation ‘very unfortunate,’ education minister says

Despite the objections from some private operators, Ontario Education Minister Jill Dunlop has said the province will be moving forward with planned changes to the funding model in the New Year.

“I find that very unfortunate that child-care centres would look at pulling out of the program,” she told CTV News Toronto on Monday.

Dunlop previously said that operators were part of the consultations when the funding formula was introduced, adding that all centres should have adequate funding to continue to operate.

Dunlop has repeatedly said the federal government needs to come to the table with more cash in order for the province to properly deliver the program in the future.

“This is their signature program, yet the province of Ontario has provided three times the amount of funding than the federal government has,” she said Monday.

With files from CTV News Toronto’s Janice Golding and The Canadian Press