TORONTO – Over 100 Ontario organizations – including child care programs from across Ontario and provincial early learning and child care associations – have come together to send an Open Letter to Premier Doug Ford today in response to news that the federal government has offered all provinces and territories 5-year extensions to their Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care funding agreements.
The agreements, set to expire in March 2026, would be extended to 2031, providing funding stability that provinces, the child care sector, and advocates have requested.
Today’s Open Letter, led by the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care and the Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario, urges Premier Ford to sign the extension agreement immediately, as a simple way to protect continued federal child care funding for Ontario’s $10aDay plan.
In their Open Letter, the organizations write that, “the $10aDay child care plan has been a game changer for Ontario children and families, and research shows it is already making a difference for our economy. At a time of economic uncertainty, the continuation of the $10aDay plan will provide much needed stability to Ontario families, to the child care sector, and to our local economies.”
The letter goes on to state that since Ontario joined the $10aDay plan in 2022, the Ontario child care community – including child care operators, frontline Early Childhood Educators and child care workers, collaborating with their local municipalities and with your government – “has worked flat out to make this plan a success. Having capped child care fees at $22 a day this year, and implemented the province’s new cost-based funding formula, the Ontario child care sector is in the middle of transformational change”.
“Child care operators and frontline Early Childhood Educators need stability, so that we can keep working towards providing high quality child care for more of Ontario’s families,” said Alana Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario.
“With Ontario families facing tariff threats and inflation, and with political uncertainty at the federal level, we need the newly re-elected Ontario government to have families’ backs. That’s why we’re asking Premier Ford to sign the agreement immediately to secure the future of $10aDay child care.”
In addition to the Open Letter from child care organizations, the parents group Parents for Child Care has just launched an e-action for families to tell Ford to Protect and Expand $10aDay Child Care in Ontario.
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For more information, contact:
Carolyn Ferns Alana Powell
Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario
[email protected] | 647-218-1275 [email protected] | 613-898-9248
