Parents, operators and advocates want more details on child-care election promises

TORONTO — Many parents, child-care operators and advocates are hoping that whoever forms Canada’s next government both maintains and expands the $10-a-day program, but a lack of clarity on election promises has left some with questions.

Liberal Leader Mark Carney, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh have all spoken about the importance of affordable child care, but where Carney and Singh have pledged explicit support for the program, Poilievre has stopped short.

At a campaign stop last month, he pledged to “massively expand the availability of child care,” but signalled that he wants to see changes in the national program that cuts the fees parents pay, lamenting that there is too much bureaucracy and that too few families can access it.

“We’re going to give more freedom and flexibility to parents, providers and provinces to support the child care of all the kids,” Poilievre said late last month, specifically citing the need for more night and weekend care for the children of shift workers.

Poilievre said that he would honour agreements with the provinces — all but three signed four-year extensions with the federal government just before the election was called, with Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario’s deals set to expire in 2026 — and his team later said no child would lose their $10-a-day care.

But questions remain. No child would lose the lowered fees the program provides, but could future children access them? What does Poilievre envision for the provinces that have not signed extensions beyond 2026? How does he want to bring more flexibility to the program? Does he want to ease restrictions on for-profit operators?

A Conservative spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for such specifics.

Some parents have the same questions.

“Freedom and flexibility — when I listened to that, I thought, ‘What does that even mean?'” said Jacqueline Stein, who had to scramble last year when her son’s daycare in Toronto announced it was pulling out of the $10-a-day program.

Stein said she believes in the promise of the program to benefit families and allow more women to enter the workforce. It does need improvements, she said, but she wants to see that happen within the program itself.

“He’s not incorrect to say that there’s still families that do not have access,” she said. “There’s a real fear that if your daycare, particularly private daycares, if they decide to pull out, it’s not like you have this roster of daycares that you can run to.”

The $10-a-day program has indeed driven up demand, with some wait lists increasing, though the issue predates the program.

Toronto mother Ella Bedard got on about a dozen child-care wait lists when she was just six weeks pregnant with her first child, and still did not get a spot until a month after she had intended to return to work, having to take an additional month-long unpaid leave.

That was before the $10-a-day program was in place in Ontario, and she was initially paying $1,800 a month for the infant spot. With the program’s fee reductions, she is now paying $478.50 per month for her preschool-aged child and hopes the program is still around when her next child, due in June, is ready for daycare.

“It’s just incredible,” she said. “At a time when the cost of living, the cost of housing, everything else was going up, this was the one household cost that went down.”

Bedard joined the group Parents for Child Care to help advocate for the program, and worries that when Poilievre says “freedom and flexibility,” he wants to replace the program with some sort of voucher system or direct payment to parents.

It’s an idea that a think tank and some for-profit daycare operators have urged the government to consider.

Krystal Churcher of ACE National, a coalition of child-care providers that urges a “funding follows family” approach, said people should be cheering a promise to bring more flexibility to the child-care system.

“Our association has been advocating for flexibility for parents, for not a one-size-fits-all, facility-based daycare, public-school-system-modelled child-care program across the country,” she said.

“Not all families want full-time daycare, and not all children thrive in those facilities, either. So having different options and flexible choices for parents that don’t work nine-to-five schedules is something that this program advertised to Canadians when it was rolled out, and hasn’t really followed through on.”

Poilievre’s comments also caught the attention of the YMCA, the largest non-profit provider of licensed child-care in the country.

“YMCAs have invested a lot of infrastructure and staffing, etc., to respond to the ($10-a-day) program, and we’re clearly nervous about those investments and how we see them moving forward,” said Peter Dinsdale, president and CEO of YMCA Canada.

“We certainly have some improvements we would like to see, but it’s not clear to us amongst all parties that that would be their intention. So we’re certainly looking for any indication, No. 1, to maintain the existing agreements, and (No. 2) eventually improve.”

Liberal Leader Mark Carney touted the program’s benefits at a campaign stop, saying that it saves parents thousands of dollars per child, per year, and that for every dollar the government spends on child care, about $2.80 in economic value is created.

He vowed to maintain the program but has not spoken about improving or expanding it. The NDP is promising expansion, but so far without details.

YMCA provides care for more than 60,000 children through the program, but there are another 86,000 on wait lists, Dinsdale said. The top issue preventing more access is the workforce, he said. There are just not enough early childhood educators to staff all those spaces.

A study commissioned by the YMCA found that increasing the wages of early childhood educators by 25 per cent could boost recruitment and retention enough to create 250,000 child-care spaces nationally.

Carolyn Ferns, policy co-ordinator for the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, which advocates for non-profit and public expansion, said that direct payments to parents do nothing to boost the workforce, don’t prevent operators from simply raising their fees, and won’t help create licensed spots with non-standard hours.

“Those things can be done better if we have a robust child-care system, (rather) than just saying to parents, ‘Here’s some money and good luck finding someone to look after your kid overnight,'” she said.

“It still leaves parents on their own to cobble together a bunch of unregulated arrangements, and calling it choice doesn’t make that any better.”

The rollout of the $10-a-day program has seen tension between some groups advocating for non-profit care and for-profit operators. Public money should not go to profits, advocates say, while private operators and others say that there can be no truly national system without the thousands of for-profit centres.

Stein, who is not with any of the advocacy groups, put her son in another for-profit daycare after her first one pulled out of the $10-a-day program, and that operator believes in the program, she said.

“When I think of daycares like that, that are so committed, that understand the significance of a program like this, that are struggling, that are a for-profit daycare — and there are many of them that want to stay in this program — and know all the benefits that it provides, I want to see those daycares do well,” Stein said.

“I want to see them be part of the solution. I want to see them be part of the conversation.”

Ontario has been pushing the federal government for $10 billion more in funding to make the program work in that province, and has urged Ottawa to lift a cap on how many for-profit operators can be in the program.

Peel Region alone, which has been identified by the province as needing the most new child-care spots, has had to turn down more than 2,000 potential spaces under the $10-a-day program because the operators were for-profit, the province says.

The Liberal government under Justin Trudeau was not keen on allowing more for-profit centres into the program, and that is partly what Martha Friendly, executive director of the Childcare Resource and Research Unit, believes Poilievre means when he talks about freedom and flexibility.

“I don’t think (cancellation) has been in the cards for a while, because the program is quite popular,” she said.

An Abacus Data survey of 1,500 Canadians conducted from March 17 to 20 asked a series of Conservative policy questions, and found that while 51 per cent think Poilievre would cancel the $10-a-day child-care program, fewer than a third of respondents — 28 per cent — believe he should.

Friendly said she was glad to see the former Liberal government extend the child-care agreements with so many provinces and territories right before the election, to safeguard that progress.

“Five years was never the time that it was going to take to build a system,” she said.

“I always thought it was a decade or more…We have never had anything like this in child care, since I’ve been involved in it, but it’s not done.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 15, 2025.

Allison Jones, The Canadian Press