Ontario reaches $10-a-day child-care deal with federal government: sources

Ontario Premier Doug Ford's government has reached a deal with Ottawa for a $10-a-day child-care program, senior officials close to the negotiations tell CBC News.

The deal is to be announced formally on Monday, officials said, making Ontario the last province to sign on to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's national child-care plan. 

The deal commits the federal government to providing $10.2 billion to Ontario over a five-year period to bring the average cost of a child-care spot down to $10 per day in 2026, according to federal and provincial officials. 

That is the same amount that the Trudeau government had offered to Ontario since negotiations on the child-care plan began last year. 

For parents, the funding means an imminent reduction of child-care fees by an average of 25 per cent, with a further 25 per cent drop a year from now. 

The provincial officials said the deal also includes a plan to create 86,000 new child care spaces in Ontario by 2026, with the priority on not-for-profit operators. 

Getting a deal helps neutralize what could have been a politically challenging election issue for Ford's Progressive Conservatives. The Ontario campaign is due to begin in less than six weeks, with election day slated for June 2.

Still, the time it took to get this deal will prompt questions about what his government accomplished by waiting to sign. Previously, Ford had said the delay was because his government wanted to get the best deal possible for the province.

At an unrelated news conference in Toronto on Sunday before the agreement was signed, Ford said the $10.2 billion offered over five years is not enough to get child care costs in Ontario down to $10/day child care. 

But when asked whether anything was holding up a deal, Ford replied: "No, I think we're good. We've worked very closely with the federal government, they've been phenomenal partners as they've always been, and we look forward to the announcement."

A provincial official told CBC News that the deal gives Ontario "way more flexibility in how we can spend the money over the term of the agreement in comparison to other provinces." But the official did not provide specifics about what that flexibility includes.

"At the end of the day a funding formula for P.E.I. can't be the same as one for a province like Ontario," said the official. "Ontario has a pretty complex child-care system."

A federal official said the main flexibility in the agreement involves allowing Ontario to spend the $1.1 billion that was allocated for the 2021-22 fiscal year during the second year of the deal, which starts on April 1.

It's likely to take a number of weeks or even months before the money would start flowing to child care facilities to bring down the price that parents pay. However, parents would eventually be able to expect a retroactive refund of 25 per cent of their child-care costs incurred from April 1 until the sticker price comes down.