The City of Toronto is urging the province to "provide the required capital funding" to build 48 child-care projects that were planned for schools and have been classified as "cancelled."
The previously approved projects were slated to create 3,083 child-care spots in schools within the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB). The boards have said costs have gone up and that the additional 25 per cent in funding offered by the province last fall isn't enough. The province has said it'll reallocate the spaces to the same communities, with the education minister saying on Monday the aim is to have these spaces available in the "very near future."
Toronto Councillor Alejandra Bravo proposed a motion about these projects at a council meeting last week, which passed unanimously in a 21-0 vote. The "cascading requests" were that the province provide the needed funding to the boards for the projects, and if not, then to let the boards have the money as "pooled funding" so they can build as many projects as possible.
The third request, applicable if the government decided not to go with the first two, called on the province to "reallocate the cancelled funding as pooled funding to the City of Toronto to administer as capital funding grants to school-based, public, and non-profit child care capital projects in the communities originally slated to receive the funds."
Bravo said the Toronto school-based child-care projects being "cancelled" was "really a blow to, I think, parents, to families, to childhood educators, and also just for the local economy."
"The projects are ready to go and there's really no need to start from scratch. The boards just need the additional funding to make up for costs that escalated during the pandemic," Bravo told The Trillium on Monday.
The 48 Toronto projects were part of a group of 56 planned for schools across Ontario that were marked in a Ministry of Education document as "cancelled," according to documents The Trillium obtained through a freedom-of-information request and previously reported on. The Ministry of Education document shows there were more than just three school boards offered "25 per cent additional funding," and that while six boards apparently decided to proceed with the projects, another six indicated they couldn't, while two said their decision was "still pending."
Ministry staff estimated "approximately 10 per cent of the original stand-alone child-care funding will be required for sunk costs," which would come to around $11 million for the cancelled projects.
Speaking about the third part of her motion, Bravo said ensuring the spaces remain in the same communities is important because "there was a lot of care and work done to see where the major gaps are."
"When we talk about community-based projects, or working with not-for-profits, some of those will need to be in schools just because that's where the space is," she said.
Bravo also said she'd like any reallocated funds to go towards non-profit spaces.
"My point of view, personally, and this is something that the city has repeatedly had a position for decades, which is that the child care work should be non-profit, that building in a profit margin means that it impacts quality," she said. "It's really crucial that we consider how allowing for-profit care to grow at the expense of not-for-profit care is going to impoverish this sector, if the profits are coming from lower wages and worse working conditions for workers."
Asked at an unrelated press conference whether the government would consider any of the City of Toronto's requests, Education Minister Todd Smith blamed the boards for not getting the projects built and said the spots would be reallocated.
"We are actually reallocating funding to proponents that are ready to build those spaces," Smith said on Monday at a Brampton high school — his first press conference since moving into the education portfolio.
"We're tired of waiting and families across the city and across Toronto are waiting for those spaces to be provided as well, and there are proponents out there that are ready, willing and able today to get shovels in the ground on those projects," he said. "So we're simply reallocating the spaces so that we can get them built so that the families that desperately need child care will be able to access those spaces in the very, very near future."
Asked how those spaces would be reallocated and whether they would go to for-profit or non-profit spaces, Smith wouldn't say.
"I'm not going to announce who's getting the spaces today, you'll have to stay tuned for those announcements," the minister said, but he went on to cite a letter he recently wrote to his federal counterpart asking for Ontario to be allowed to allocate more than 30 per cent of spaces under the $10-a-day program to for-profit providers.
"We need to be creating spaces here in Peel, we need to be creating spaces in Toronto, and there are vast rural regions in Ontario as well, that are simply unable to provide any spaces at all because of the framework that's been set up by the federal government to create child-care spaces," he said.
Bravo said she believes city council has made a "reasonable request" to the province and that the city will continue its advocacy on the issue.
