Thank you, and thanks for the honour of being with you today.
I'm Andrea Hannen from the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario, or ADCO.
ADCO represents independent licensed child care programs, both commercial and not-for-profit. Most of our member centres are run as small businesses, the majority of which are owned by ECEs, early childhood educators. Others are owned by Ontario-certified teachers, Montessori teachers or internationally trained professionals in early education. We also have not-for-profit member centres run by churches, temples and community groups.
In Ontario, there are only enough licensed spaces to support about 25% of children under five, so ADCO shares your goals of expanding access, making care more affordable and ensuring it's of high quality.
So far, we've heard a lot about the aspirations the government has for the Canada-wide early learning and child care program, or CWELCC. We haven't heard much about the challenges facing it though. ADCO is suggesting amendments that could help prevent these challenges from becoming systemic barriers to the program's success.
We need to keep in mind that although the federal government helps fund it, child care is a provincial responsibility. All Canadian provinces have well-established, highly regulated child care systems supported in part by provincial tax revenues, and within each province there's an existing network of licensed spaces. Already half of Canadian provinces have had to amend their CWELCC agreements. Staffing shortages are a big part of this, and few provinces can run their existing systems at full capacity.
In Ontario, many centres have closed entire rooms or shortened their hours because there's not enough staff. It's not just about wages and working conditions, although both are really important. It's that we can't pull ECEs out of thin air. Provinces can expand ECE diploma programs or work with the federal government to recruit more child care professionals from abroad, but that can take years, and families can't wait that long.
Families are eager for $10-a-day child care, but there aren't enough spaces to accommodate them. Staffing shortages will make it hard to expand the sector fast enough to meet the needs of a growing population.
To address this, ADCO is suggesting changes to the bill to reflect the fact that families use a variety of child care solutions. Rather than trying to create a single funded solution that may not currently be available, the CWELCC could simply focus on supporting families. The bill could allow provinces to offer families more flexible funding that follows the child. This approach would not only help more families access care now but also reduce the administrative burden on licensees, giving them more time to focus on the children.
ADCO is deeply concerned that many of Canada's existing centres could be at risk of closure because they fall outside of the bill's preferred model. They aren't in the public or not-for-profit spheres, yet they're highly regulated for quality. While many of these centres are covered by the current CWELCC agreements, the language of the bill could make continuing to fund these centres difficult or impossible once the current agreements expire.
Paragraph 7(1)(a) of the bill needs to be amended to include all licensed child care. This is a matter of practicality, because the last thing anybody wants is for Canadians to wind up with fewer licensed spaces as a result of the government passing this bill.
The committee has heard a lot about the differences between not-for-profit care and care provided by centres run as small businesses or larger companies. However, within each province all licensed child care programs are bound by law to adhere to the same standards of quality, no matter what their incorporated auspice is. To suggest that there's a difference is to malign the hard work of the provincial inspection officials who devote themselves to ensuring that all regulated programs are delivering quality care.
My last point is about the costs associated with the bill being so specific about the types of care to be funded. It takes a tremendous amount of new government bureaucracy to try to transition Canada's existing systems to the single model proposed in the bill. While some people worry that taxpayer dollars could wind up funding undue profits, the bigger risk may be the creation of a program that delivers more government bureaucracy than actual child care.
In closing, I'd like to thank the committee for its work. I would also ask that you consider the amendments that ADCO and others have put forward to broaden the focus of the bill to support all families and all child care programs. Families are and always will be in the best position to know what will work best for their children.
Thanks.