Ontario signs deal to bring $10/day child care to the province by 2025

Ontario has come to an agreement with the federal government to implement $10/day childcare to the province by 2025.

By Meredith Bond and the Canadian Press

Ontario has become the last province in Canada to sign a deal to bring $10 per day child care to the province by 2025.

Parents will start receiving rebates that will cut fees by up to 25 per cent in May. They will see a further cost reduction in December, when fees will be reduced by up to 50 per cent, saving families an average of $6,000 per year.

“This is real money for families at a time where we know cost of living continues to go up … The challenges that our economies are facing means this is real money that will stay in the pockets of families this year to help with everything,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Further cuts will be made in September 2024 and will reach $10 a day by September 2025.

The deal, worth $13.2 billion over five years, was announced on Monday by Premier Doug Ford with Trudeau in Brampton.

The agrement also has Ontario creating 86,000 child-care spaces, though that number includes more than 15,000 spaces already created since 2019.

“We know the economic growth that is unlocked when moms no longer have to choose between having a family or advancing their career. It’s a benefit not just to family, not just to kids, but to all of us,” said Trudeau in his announcement.

“It is the fruits of more than half a century of activism by Canadian feminists who have understood for a really really long time that early learning and child care was an essential feminist policy, but also an essential economic policy,” added Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.

The province confimed Monday they had secured a sixth year of funding, which will be its share of $9.2 billion long-term funding laid out in the initial child care plan from the federal government.

The provincial government was also able to secure more flexibility in how the money will be spent, and able to secure a review with a deal in year three with more possible funding being implemented at that point.

Minister of Education Stephen Lecce said while other provinces’ funding will focus on not for profit childcare, Ontario was “able to secure some flexibility to protect parental choice, including for those small business owners, often women-owned enterprises.”

Lecce added they will be maintaining the Ontario child care tax credit program as well.

Rebates will start to be handed out in May, just a few weeks before the provincial election is set to take place. Ford explained this child care deal is just one of the ways his government is “laser focused on finding more ways to keep costs down for Ontario families.”

 

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