Ontario weakened its $10-a-day child care funding rules. Now the federal government is demanding answers on exactly how much money it expects to make from them.
The federal government could lose hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of a recent decision by the Ontario government to cut funding for child care subsidies and other low-income support programs.
How much money Ontario could lose
Under the Ontario government’s Child Care Benefit Program, which provides subsidies for child care costs to families with incomes under $30,000, parents contribute $250 a month.
By contrast, parents with a monthly pre-tax income of $20,000 or less pay full cost.
Child care subsidies are paid in advance, meaning that, if the government’s previous plan for changes to the program was successful, all subsidies for child care would be distributed in a lump sum to parents in February 2020.
Child Care Benefit is $2.1 billion a year.
The new proposal was that the “current program funding be replaced by a new program covering a higher number of families, but of lower cost per young child,” the Ontario government said.
By doing that, the government said it would save $600 million annually, and that it would be “sustainable for two to three decades.
By contrast, the current program is projected to end in February 2020.
When the program was first initiated in 1997, each parent was entitled to a maximum of $30,000 per year for child care. However, parents are currently eligible for an additional $10 a day, for a total of $20,000, for a total $40,000 per year for child care subsidies.
In the past, the government suggested a “sliding scale” for subsidies under the Child Care Benefit Program: “For example, someone who would normally receive $30,000 in subsidy, would receive a sliding scale that would gradually cut it back to $10,000,” the government said.
What the province says is that it would “propose to gradually reduce the subsidy amounts per family by 0.75 per cent each year until it reaches zero per child in the late 2020s.”
But the provincial government would not say what percentage of families would qualify for the full $40,000
