The YMCA of Owen Sound Grey Bruce is opting into the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care System.
YMCAs across Ontario have decided to join the system, which will reduce the average cost of child care to $10 a day on average by 2026.
“We have been working with the government to try to bring affordable child care to families across the province for years and it’s just an important step in the right direction to make this happen,” says YMCA Owen Sound Grey Bruce Child Care Director Cyndy Jefferson.
Jefferson says users in Grey Bruce will start seeing credits on their accounts in November. Child care fees will later be reduced by more than 50 per cent by Jan. 1, 2023.
She says what patrons will end up paying by next year will vary.
“It will be 50 per cent of our base fees, up to a minimum of $12 a day, it just depends, our rates are different for all of our different programs. The hope is that by the end of 2026, that we will actually be at that average $10 a day,” says Jefferson.
Jefferson says by opting into this program, there will be no changes to services.
“Certainly we would hope down the road to be able to offer more quality licensed child care to children and families in our community, but right now we are being faced with a significant staffing crisis, and until we are able to resolve that staffing crisis, we are not going to be able to expand as we would hope to,” says Jefferson.
Jefferson says opting into the Canada-wide program will be good for families in the community.
“We believe there is a lot of work that still needs to happen, and a lot of information that we need to sort through. It is a pretty big package, it is a pretty big system that they are talking about,” says Jefferson. “For us as an organization, we believe that our government really needs to look at that work place strategy and the cost of that for us to make sure that we can continue to have a solid child care system available for children and families across our province, including Owen Sound and Grey Bruce.
The Ontario government says the purpose of this program is to lower fees, increase access, enhance high-quality child care, support inclusion, and enhance data and reporting.
In addition to reducing costs for child care fees by 50 per cent on average by the end of December this year, the province says the program will also create about 86,000 new licensed child care spaces by the end of 2026. The program also seeks to improve compensation for low wage registered early childhood educators. The program will also use evidence-based data to measure and improve how the system supports children and families.
The last day for child care operators to opt into the program was Nov. 1.