News & Stories: Policy Monitor

Excerpt: "$15 Minimum Wage and Equal Pay for Part-Time and Full-Time Workers Part of Plan to Help People Get Ahead in a Changing Economy."

Excerpt: "Ontario has been working together with partners in child care and related sectors to build a high quality, seamless, and more accessible early years and child care system."

Excerpt: "Federal Budgets 2016 and 2017 proposed to invest $7.5 billion over 11 years, starting in 2017-2018, to support and create more high-quality, affordable child care across the country, particularly for families more in need. Of this investment: $95 million will go towards closing data gaps, to better understand what child care looks like in Canada and track progress; $100 million will go towards early learning and child care innovation; A portion of this investment will be dedicated to improving access to culturally appropriate early learning and child care programs for all Indigenous children."

Excerpt: "Ontario is investing up to $1.6 billion in new capital funding to support the creation of 45,000 new licensed child care spaces in schools, other public spaces and communities over the next five years."

Excerpt: "As of September 1, 2017, Ontario now requires school boards to provide before- and after-school programs for children up to age 12, in all publicly funded elementary schools serving students up to Grade 6, where there is sufficient demand. These programs provide additional opportunities for play-based programming, and are a critical support for parents who rely on before- and after-school care to accommodate their work schedules."

Excerpt: "Ontario is making it easier for children and their families to access high quality early years programming and services with the launch of 100 new EarlyON Child and Family Centres across the province."

Excerpt: "Ontario is expanding culturally relevant licensed child care and early years programs, and investing in more child care spaces for First Nation, Métis and Inuit children and their families living in urban and rural areas across the province."

Excerpt: "For those young families with children, access to child care is also critically important. For mothers in particular, it means they can go back to work when they choose. Earlier this month, when we celebrated International Women's Day, we were reminded again that there is a long way to go to achieve gender equity. Only when we eliminate those barriers to child care will we get there. Thus far, your government has taken its first steps to make child care more accessible. The waitlist fees for child care have been eliminated, and a plan to help 100,000 more families access spots in child care is well underway. Subsidies are available for 60 per cent of all those new spaces, because they need to be an affordable choice for families. When children in Ontario turn four, they now have access to full-day kindergarten, which provides early, high-quality education to four and five-year-olds and huge savings for their families -- giving them a great start."

Excerpt: "Ontario is making an overall new investment of $2.2 billion over three years in child care, which includes over $930 million in 2020-21 to make licensed preschool child care free for kids from the age of 2.5 until they are eligible for kindergarten, beginning in September 2020. To support the expansion of quality, licensed child care, Ontario will also be introducing a wage grid for all program staff working in the early years and child care sector in April 2020 that will ensure their compensation is more closely aligned with Early Childhood Educators working in full-day kindergarten."

Excerpt: "Many parents today are trying to balance family and career challenges. We're helping families by making it easier to access good and affordable child care. We're helping with child care by: providing free preschool child care for kids aged two-and-a-half until they're eligible for kindergarten, starting September 2020; helping families access over 100,000 new child care spaces; increasing access to before- and after-school programs for kids up to age 12."

Excerpt: "Ontario is funding Canada's first dedicated care centre for fetuses requiring high-risk medical care and in-utero surgeries. The new Ontario Fetal Centre will support expectant families with increased access to world-renowned specialists and ground-breaking surgeries."

Excerpt: "Building more child care spaces and making child care more affordable will give parents, especially women, more choice about when and if they return to work, which will help close the gender wage gap and grow Ontario's economy."