Hoping for $10-a-day child care? Here’s how many Toronto daycares opted in to the federal program that gives parents a subsidy to pay for private, publicly funded child-care centres. (Lisa Xing/The Globe and Mail)
Hoping for $10-a-day child care? Here’s how many Toronto daycares opted in to the federal program that gives parents a subsidy to pay for private, publicly funded child-care centres. (Lisa Xing/The Globe and Mail)
Hoping for $10-a-day child care? Here’s how many Toronto daycares opted in to the federal program that gives parents a subsidy to pay for private, publicly funded child-care centres.
The subsidy has been available in Toronto for six years, but only eight daycares have taken up the offer.
But that’s about to change: starting Oct. 1, nearly every Toronto daycare will be eligible for the subsidy.
The program has been around since 2008, but only eight of the city’s approximately 700 daycares have opted in. Most of the others either don’t believe in the subsidy or have no plans to participate.
The subsidy offers parents $10 every day for three years for every child under six to 18 months.
The daycare subsidy was one of several controversial budget measures tabled in March by the federal government to offset the cost of the nation’s much-debated, $22.4-billion “baby bonus.”
While parents would continue to receive child-care subsidies federally, they are not eligible for the $9-an-hour tax credit that was available under the program before it was revised to extend to daycares.
A daycare is eligible for the subsidy if it has an annual operating budget that exceeds $4,000, with $1,500 of that figure to be spent on supplies, staff training or equipment, and $1,000 earmarked for programs.
Only two Toronto daycares have opted in to the subsidy, though the number could grow as more daycare centres take advantage of the program.
In the case of One Child, a daycare that started operating in 2011, the subsidy was offered to its approximately 60 children in the first
