The province has gone back on their word to help Bruce County add 645 new child care spaces to the region.
On April 2 of this year, the Ministry of Education released a memo to update a previous commitment to add 86,000 new childcare spaces across Ontario, including the 645 in Bruce County that were to be realized by 2026.
Director of Human Services Tina Metcalfe explained to council, “Bruce County, as a Service System Manager for childcare and early years, is not permitted to approve any new spaces into the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Childcare (CWELCC) system that exceeds our revised space target allocation from the Ministry of Education.”
The memo directed the county to reduce its target by 133 spaces, per the new funding and space allocations, meaning that Bruce County can now only add 512 new spaces.
She also explained that county staff is working to persuade the province to change the allotment back.
“Staff have identified the impact on our communities, in writing to the administration of the Ministry of Education, given the local demand for childcare and the impact on our economy,” she said at Thursday’s council meeting.
If county staff isn’t able to fight the 133-spot reduction, they’re hoping to at least get most of those spaces back.
She added, “In our letter to the Ministry, we specifically requested the re-instatement of 73 of the 133 spaces that were reduced to allow existing expansion planning underway across the county to proceed.”
Bruce County CAO Christine MacDonald explained that even if county funding was to create those 73 spaces anyway, it wouldn’t be permitted by the Ministry.
“It was very clear that we are not to expand and that we don’t have the authority within the CWELCC system to add those spaces,” MacDonald explained. “So even if we were to use County funds for those 73 spaces, it’s not permittable in the CWELCC system.”
That means that the Ministry of Education would need to approve those spaces rather than the county trying to fund them on its own.
The rationale from the Ministry of Education was the need to redistribute expansion spaces across the province, as well as the need to stay within the federal funding envelop from the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care system.
