Who’s responsible?
Who to contact
- Ministry of Education, Early Years Division
- Website
- (416) 325 - 2929
- 1 800-387-5514
- This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Child Care
The Early Years Division of the Ministry of Education is responsible for licensing and monitoring child care centres and home child care under the Child Care and Early Years Act and regulations. Licensed home child care agencies oversee regulated home child care.
Unlike other jurisdictions, parent fee subsidies in Ontario are administered at the local level.
Kindergarten
The Ministry of Education is also responsible for kindergarten under the Education Act. Junior kindergarten and kindergarten are full-school day programs.
Two years of full-school-day kindergarten is available to every child in Ontario in rural and urban communities with each school board responsible for its delivery. A child must be four years of age by December 31 of the school year to attend junior kindergarten and five years of age by December 31 of the school year to attend senior kindergarten. Attendance is not compulsory but most children attend.
The maximum enrolment in a kindergarten class is 29, with the school-board average 26. A junior or senior kindergarten class has a team of two– a teacher, with an Ontario teaching certificate and a Registered Early Childhood Educator. The curriculum framework for a kindergarten is The Kindergarten Program, 2016.
Ontario is unique in Canada in the role played by local municipal or regional governments.
In Ontario, 47 local governments are designated Consolidated Municipal Service Managers and District Social Services Administration Boards (CMSMs and DSSABs), responsible for planning and managing child care services, administering fee subsidies and allocating additional resources to families and centres providing care to children with a disability. In addition, some of these also provide municipal/regionally-operated (public) child care in centres or through family child care agencies.
Regulated child care
Families are responsible for finding and obtaining a child care space for their child(ren); there is no universal entitlement to a child care space for children in Ontario.
A licensed child care search tool is available through the Ministry of Education. This tool allows users to find licensed child care providers by city, postal code, type of program (i.e., centre vs. home care), age group and/or name of centre. It also provides some information about the centre's compliance with provincial regulation. In most of Ontario, parents are required to contact the program directly to place their child on the waiting list.
Facts and figures
- There is a regulated space for 25% of children aged 0 – 12 years. (2021)
- There is a regulated full- or part-time centre-based space for 21.3% of children aged 0 – 5 years. (2021)
- 21% of childcare spaces are operated by for-profit organizations. (2021)
- Ontario municipal and regional governments operate about 2% of regulated spaces. (2021)
Some municipalities, including Hamilton, Kingston, Ottawa, Sudbury, Toronto, Thunder Bay and Wellington County and others have their own tools to help families find child care, and, in some cases, operate centralized waiting lists. Municipalities, or Consolidated Municipal Service Managers (CMSM) or District Social Services Administration Boards (DSSAB) are likely to have their own local information including lists of child care services and—in some instances—quality assessment information. Contact information for your local CMSM/DSSAB can be found online.
Toronto's Child Care Finder also provides information about the quality of programs based on ratings derived from the Assessment for Quality Improvement (AQI) tool developed by the City of Toronto. All centres in the City of Toronto with service contracts to provide subsidized child care are part of the City’s quality rating program; this comprises about 80% of licensed spaces.
Paying for child care
Families are responsible for paying child care fees.
Based on the Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada 2021 report, parent fees in Ontario are not set or regulated by the government, as they are established by individual child care operators. (2023)
According to the Measuring matters: Assessing Canada’s progress toward $10-a-day child care for all report, median monthly fees were $771 for an infant, $621 for a toddler and $555.50 for a preschooler. See the report for a breakdown of child care fees in 37 cities across Canada, including 12 cities in Ontario.
Fee subsidies
Ontario’s child care fee subsidy is managed and administered by 47 Consolidated Municipal Service Managers (CMSM) and District Social Services Administration Boards (DSSAB). Fee subsidies may be used in any regulated non-profit or for-profit centre or family child care home, provided the operator has a purchase of service agreement with the CMSM or DSSAB. It is important for parents to confirm that a child care program is accept families using subsidies.
School board operated before- and after-school programs, authorized recreational and skill building programs, and camps that meet criteria set out under the CCEYA and regulations are also eligible to receive children with fee subsidies unless the CMSM or DSSAB specifies otherwise.
Parents must make a separate application for a licensed space (usually to the centre or agency) and a fee subsidy (the CMSM or DDSAB). There are often long municipal waiting lists for subsidies, so parents should apply early. A regulated space does not have to be secured to apply for a subsidy but the parents cannot use the subsidy without having secured regulated space.
Do not hesitate — put your name on the waiting list for a subsidy when you put your name on a waiting list for a child care space. It is important to do both of these long before child care is actually needed. Thus, you should consider putting your name on the subsidy waiting list as soon as you learn you are pregnant as well as on centre waiting lists. It may be easier to secure a space in regulated home child care than a centre, especially for an infant.
Accessing fee subsidies
Contact your local Consolidated Municipal Service Manager (CMSM) or District Social Services Administration Board (DSSAB) to find out how to apply for a subsidy or get on a subsidy waitlist.
Although subsidies are managed at the municipal level, eligibility requirements are set by the province. While the CMSMs and DSSABs may consider social criteria related to the parent, such as employment or enrollment in an educational or training program, eligibility is largely based on an income test. Subsidy amounts are determined on a sliding scale. Parents with an adjusted income lower than $20,000/year pay nothing.
As has been noted elsewhere, in Ontario eligibility for a fee subsidy does not guarantee that it will be available. It is very important to put yourself on the subsidy waiting list as soon as possible.
Regulated child care
In Ontario, licensed child care programs, including child care centres, nursery schools, before/after school programs and regulated family child care, must operate in accordance with the regulations set out in the Child Care and Early Years Act, 2014.
A licensed centre is required to post its licence in a place where parents and staff can easily see it. Provincial government personnel, referred to as program advisors, monitor licensed child care centres on an annual basis.
Centres and licensed family child care agencies need to have a parent handbook to outline policies and procedures, including how parent’s issues and concerns are to be addressed and a program statement, reviewed annually, describing the goals for children.
Family child care (“supervised private home day care” or “home child care”) in Ontario is provided to children under age 13 in a caregiver’s private residence. Child care homes are monitored by licensed agencies responsible for multiple family child care homes that operate under the regulations. Ontario family child care agency personnel (home visitors) make regular visits to the homes they are responsible for and may provide caregiver training, equipment and backup.
In addition, there are in-home services which refer to child care provided under the aegis of a home child care agency for a child at her/his home, or at another place where residential care is provided for the child. There is an agreement between a home child care agency and the child care provider that ensures the agency’s oversight of the provision of care
The Child Care and Early Years Act, 2014 and its regulations address a wide range of standards, including window sizes, child to staff ratios, and outdoor time. A number of regulations related to program quality are highlighted below.
- Registered Early Childhood Educator is Ontario’s only certification. An RECE is registered with the College of Early Childhood Educators. There are no levels within an RECE designation. To be eligible for registration and considered qualified, a person must complete either a two-year ECE diploma or an equivalent approved by the College of Early Childhood Educators, as well as other requirements.
- Centre supervisors must be a Registered Early Childhood Educator in good standing with the College of Early Childhood Educators, and must have two years’ experience in a licensed child care setting.
- Staff qualification requirements are at the room level. All rooms for children younger than kindergarten must have at least one qualified staff member, with the exception of preschool-age rooms licensed for 24 children, which must have at least two. There is no training specified for other staff in the room.
- Home child care providers are not required under the CCEYA to have specific training or educational qualifications. Providers are required to have valid certification in standard first aid, including infant and child CPR. As well, agencies may provide other training.
- Staff:child ratios address the number of staff required per number of children.
- Group size is the number of children, usually of one age group, that stay together throughout the day in a defined group – often a room.
- Family child care homes have a specified number of children by age.
Child care centres
| Age of child | Staff:child ratio | Max group size |
|---|---|---|
| Infants (up to 18 months) | 1:3 | 10 |
| Toddlers (18 – 30 months) | 1:5 | 15 |
| Preschool-age (30 – 6 years) | 1:8 | 24 |
| Kindergarten (44 mos – 7 years) | 1:13 | 26 |
| Primary and Junior School-age (68 months – 13 years) | 1:15 | 30 |
Regulated family child care homes
A home child care provider may care for up to six children under 13 years of age, including their own children under four. No more than three children may be younger than two years old.
Child care centres are required to provide meals that meet specified nutritional standards. The names of children in the child care centre who have allergies or food restrictions and their respective restrictions must be posted in cooking, serving and play areas.
Menus must be posted in an accessible place for parents to see.
- Children in full day child care (six hours or more) are required to have at least two hours outdoor time per day (weather permitting) unless a physician or parent of the child advises otherwise in writing.
- In child care centres, the play area is required to be at ground level, adjacent to the premises, have “appropriate fencing” and allot 5.6 square metres per child.
Centres and family child care providers are required to have their own written policies and procedures outlining the expectations of staff as they implement goals of the program with children.
In all regulated child care settings, “corporal punishment”, “physical restraint for the purposes of discipline or in lieu of supervision”, “use of harsh or degrading measures or threats”, or “deprivation of a child of basic needs including food, shelter, clothing or bedding” is prohibited.
Every child care program must have a parent handbook that outlines policies and procedures, including a written statement that sets out how parent’s issues and concerns are to be addressed.
The regulations require some basic health and safety precautions to be met. For example, service providers are required to:
- Have a written procedure for emergency evacuation.
- Daily written record summarizing incidents affecting health, safety, or well-being of staff or children.
- Have a written anaphylactic policy.
- Have medications stored in a locked place, written permission obtained before staff can administer medications to children.
- Have a centre-specific written policy and procedure regarding serious occurrences (i.e., injury, death).
How Does Learning Happen? Ontario’s Pedagogy For The Early Years has been Ontario’s official framework to guide programming and pedagogy in licensed child care since June 2015. Licensed child care settings are required to have a program statement consistent with the frameworks of children, foundations, and approaches. Additional regulations under the Child Care and Early Years Act are in place to support implementation of How Does Learning Happen? in licensed child care settings. EarlyON Child and Family Centres as well as school board operated before and after school programs are also required, through guidelines, to use How Does Learning Happen? to support programming.
Early Learning For Every Child Today, released in 2007 and updated in 2014 is an additional resource about learning and development that includes guiding principles and a continuum of development for children from birth to eight years of age. Use of Early Learning For Every Child Today is not a provincial requirement for licensed child care programs.
Unregulated child care
According to the Child Care and Early Years Act, 2014, unregulated family child care homes can care for a maximum of five children under the age of 13. Unregulated (and regulated) caregivers must include their own children in the number of children under four years. No more than two children under two years (including the caregivers’ children) may be cared for.
It is not legal to operate a nursery school or child care centre without a license.
Authorized recreational and skill building programs that both provide child care outside school hours for 6 – 12 year olds and also include, activities that promote recreational, artistic, musical, or athletic skills or provide religious, culture or linguistic instruction may be termed “approved” but are not licensed.
Children with disabilities
It is a matter of ‘provincial interest’ that Ontario child care programs respect equity, inclusiveness and diversity in communities and the particular qualities of children with disabilities.
Children with special needs up to the age of 18 who are in a regulated child care program (either family child care or a child care centre) may be eligible for a subsidy. For a child with additional needs who receives child care, an up-to-date individualized support plan must be in place.
The local Consolidated Municipal Service Manager (CMSM) or District Social Services Administration Board (DSSAB) may also provide additional funds to providers to help support the inclusion of children with special needs in their program. Providers are responsible for applying for this extra support.
See Do you have a child with a disability or special need? for more information on provincial/territorial supports for children with disabilities in child care.