Owners of private child-care facilities across the country will be launching a week of rolling closings as part of a campaign to protest against what they say is an unfair funding formula in Ontario under the federal $10-a-day program.
Private operators in at least five other provinces – Alberta, B.C., Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia – will be joining those in Ontario in the campaign that begins on Monday. They are focusing on Ontario’s formula because they are concerned that something like it will be adopted in their provinces.
“By Friday, we hope to see Ontario say they’re just going to pause this and actually take some time to listen to stakeholders and child-care operators on the ground and parents,” said Krystal Churcher, a spokesperson for the Association of Alberta Childcare Entrepreneurs National Committee on Childcare Reform.
She added that then they could “move forward in a way that actually works, because what they’re rolling out is not going to work.”
The group represents owners who oversee nearly 150,000 licensed child-care spaces across Canada, Ms. Churcher said.
As many as 30 centres across Ontario if not more will be closed on Tuesday, the same day operators will rally at Queen’s Park, said Jacky Sheppard, chair of the Private Operators Group, which represents more than 950 private daycare owners in Ontario.
More centres may choose to close throughout the week, including Thursday, when the national association plans to hold a rally on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Ms. Sheppard said.
Ms. Churcher said that she is unable to estimate how many centres will close throughout the week.
Anya Kerr said she plans to close the two child-care centres that she operates in Gravenhurst, Ont., on Tuesday to attend the rally at Queen’s Park.
Ms. Kerr supports affordable child care, she said, but the new funding model will hurt operators.
“We want this. We just want it to be done without wasting so much time and money so that it can affect more families positively, not affect all the operators negatively,” she said.
Ontario unveiled a new cost-based funding model in August that will take effect in January.
Currently, centres are compensated through a revenue-replacement model that covers the reduced cost of fees, which were frozen in 2022.
Many operators have long said that this approach fails to account for the true costs of providing child care, especially for those who kept their fees low prior to the freeze.
Under the new formula, which will cap parent fees at $22 per day for children under the age of six in programs participating in the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care deal, operators will receive benchmark funding based on a range of factors, including geographic location and the number of licensed spaces per age group.
For-profit operators will see an average 8-per-cent profit under the formula, and there will be an average 8-per-cent surplus for non-profit operators.
But some operators say the new formula is too vague, and many are worried that they will not be able to allocate funds as they choose, Ms. Sheppard said.
“We won’t have control on spending, and we’ll have to give this up, and give that up,” she said.
A spokesperson for Ontario Minister of Education Jill Dunlop, whose portfolio includes child care, says the province has already engaged in consultations to create the formula, and is calling on the federal government to provide more funding.
“The new funding formula, which was created with extensive sector consultations, prioritizes a simple and easy-to-administer system, that is consistent across the province and funds operators based on the true costs of operating child care,” Edyta McKay said in an e-mailed statement to The Globe and Mail.
“For this national program to fully succeed, the federal government needs to provide more funding to support parents and operators.”
Besides rolling closings, the National Awareness Week will include letter-writing campaigns to various levels of government and presentations to parents, Ms. Sheppard said.
Ontario has already had lengthy discussions with many for-profit operators in creating the formula, said Carolyn Ferns, policy co-ordinator for the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care.
“They consulted for two years with the sector, including they had the Ministers Advisory Group that our organizations didn’t sit on, but actually several for-profit centres and organizations did sit on to give them advice on this approach that they released in August,” she said.
Closing centres to put pressure on the government is “unethical,” Ms. Ferns said, but it may nonetheless prove to be effective.
“It’s an advocacy tactic designed to create disruption and get attention, and it’s certainly doing that,” she said.