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Ontario Signs On to Federal Child Care Plan, Parents to Get Rebates in May

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The Ontario government has signed a $13.2 billion deal with the federal government to cut child care fees by half before the year’s end and give parents with kids aged five and under a rebate starting in May.

Premier Doug Ford and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the agreement in a joint press conference on March 28, making Ontario the last province to get on board with the Liberal government’s plan to bring child care fees down to $10 a day across the country by 2026.

The rebates, retroactive to April 1, will be for a fee reduction of up to 25 percent, and will be going out to parents next month, with another cost reduction by an average of 50 percent coming in December. More reductions are slated for September 2024 to bring Ontario’s childcare to an average of $10 a day by the following September.

The fee cuts would amount to an average savings per child of about $6,000 a year by the end of 2022, Trudeau said.

Ford, who will begin a provincial election campaign in the coming weeks, said the agreement is “the right deal for Ontarians.”

“It’s a deal that provides flexibility in how we allocate federal funding, flexibility that is critical for making this deal work for Ontario,” he said.

The five-year child-care program was to include $1 billion for Ontario in year one, which is 2021-22. Since that fiscal year ends in four days, the federal government is allowing them more flexibility to push most of that spending into future years.

Ontario had wanted more certainty beyond the life of the original five-year deal—though the federal government’s budget last year said funding for the program after the fifth year would be $9 billion annually—and got a commitment of $2.9 billion for year six.

The deal will also create an additional 86,000 child-care spaces for Ontario, which includes more than 15,000 spaces already created since 2019.

The program includes an automatic review in year three to ensure the costs are funded, Ford said.

The Canadian Press contributed to this article.

Andrew Chen

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Andrew Chen is an Epoch Times reporter based in Toronto.



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