Yahoo Finance There's no secret to finding affordable childcare
When Regnard Raquedan and his wife Liza had their daughter three years ago, they found themselves staring down the same challenges many new Torontonian families face: finding affordable childcare. Between sprawling waitlists and scattered resources, they found the process extremely daunting.
“In the grand scheme of things, you are in the most expensive place to find childcare in Canada,” he says.
So the husband and wife duo launched CubbySpot, a mobile platform connecting parents with daycares, helping them find spaces with availability that fit their budget and might offer subsidies to them (if they’re eligible) and in turn help daycares manage their waitlists.
“You can find a centre close to you, that has the subsidy (that) can make it more affordable for you,” explains Raquedan.
On the one hand, the platform puts the resources all in one place making it easier for parents to compare prices. But in a “market-driven” childcare environment like Toronto, parents will be hard-pressed to find a deal.
When it comes to childcare in Toronto, fees far outrank other major cities with the median fee for infants sitting at $1,649 a month, toddlers at $1,375 a month, and preschoolers at $1,150 a month, according to a recent report released this week by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. To put that in perspective, a middle-income family in Toronto with both an infant and toddle would spend $36,000 a year on childcare.
And it’s only increasing.
According to the CCPA’s report, fees for regulated childcare climbed an average of eight per cent across Canada since 2014, tripling the pace of inflation. In the infant category, unsurprisingly, Vancouver follows closely behind Toronto at $1,321, followed by Calgary at $1,102 a month, St. John’s at $1,085, Ottawa at $990 with Halifax, Saint John and Saskatoon not falling to far behind. Winnipeg came in closer to $651 a month.
But not all provinces are market driven.
In Quebec, where prices are set by the provincial government and kept the same across all age groups, parents pay anywhere from $164 a month in Montreal to c$179 a month in cities like Gatineau, Laval and Quebec City.
Unfortunately, says Martha Friendly, executive director of the Childcare Resource and Research Unit (CRRU), a policy research institute, there are not a lot of things parents can do to make childcare more affordable.
“There’s no magical fund of money that gives people sponsorships or anything,” she says. There are however subsidies targeted at low to modest income families in every province but Quebec, which cover all or part of the fee.
“They come automatically when you get a space,” says Friendly. “But that doesn’t mean you’ll get one because the waiting lists are huge (and) as you can see from the study parents often have to pay big out of pocket costs on top of that.”
Parents eligible for subsidies in Saskatoon still end up paying around $500 a month for preschoolers. While Ontario banned the practice of waiting list fees in September, 70 per cent of regulated child-care centres still have a wait list and fees can range from $10 to $200.
She points out that some parents, especially in the pricier cities, may choose to look outside the world of regulated childcare to find babysitters or unregulated daycares.
“It may be cheaper, it may not be,” says Friendly. “(But) many people do, they use somebody that they find on the Internet or a bulletin board or somebody down the block.”
Ultimately, it’s a question of what parents want to do – do they feel safe having a nanny or a sitter? Do they want public oversight?
“The problem is, there’s not much parents can do except to be well-informed,” she says. Her best advice: sign up for the waiting lists on the way home from the ultrasound appointment. It comes off a bit facetious, she admits, but Friendly insists young parents expecting their first child need to start thinking about childcare as early as possible, figuring out which waiting lists they want to be on.
“It wont make it more affordability but it might make it more accessible because spaces are really scarce,” she says.
