With federal daycare program at risk, pressure is on for London parents looking for childcare

Christopher Labelle lives and works in London, Ont., but drives his three-year-old son, Dexton, 45-minutes southeast of the city to Tillsonburg to drop him off at daycare at least three days a week.

“It’s not fair to my son to have to sit in the car so many hours a day,” Labelle said.

His search for childcare started when Dexton was six months old, and the family lived in Aylmer. A $35-a-day home daycare in Tillsonburg was the closest option they could find.

Since separating from Dexton’s mother and moving to London, Labelle has been trying to find a place in the city but has had little success.

“There was just nothing that was structured and able to accompany the hours that we were looking for,” he said.

Five years since the federal government launched its plan for a Canada-wide, $10-a-day daycare program, many parents are still struggling to find childcare in the first place, let alone access the program's benefits.

“With each month, I lose more hope,” said parent Sura Alqiseed, who has applied to 25 daycares over two years. “I’m supposed to go back to work in July and I still have nothing lined up. I think about it constantly.”

The Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) program, which lowers fees to $19 a day on average in Ontario as an interim step toward $10, had been set to expire on March 31.

The province secured a one-year extension with Ottawa for the child-care agreement at the end of last year. However, Education Minister Paul Calandra’s spokesperson Emma Testani told CBC News last week that a "significant increase” in federal funding is necessary to keep the program going longer.

"Without a revised federal funding commitment, the long-term success of the … program is at risk," Testani said in an email.

That’s concerning for parents like Alquiseed, who said she imagines the search for affordable childcare will become more difficult if the subsidy ends.

“I don’t know how they’re planning to get people to survive,” she said.

London area parents can apply for childcare on the website OneHSN, where they can join multiple waitlists for their desired centres.

Alquiseed said she’s called some of the centres that she applied to, and was told she had more than 400 families ahead of her at one location. Many centres refused to tell her the length of the waitlist, she added.

At Chelsea Green Children’s Centre in London, registrar Margaret Cereghini said the centre is at its 114-child capacity and has about 450 families on the waitlist. She called that a “low number,” adding that the waitlist was at 2,000 people just a few years ago.

“I’ve had parents cry,” she said. “I’ve had many families that come in on a monthly basis to the point where I know them by sight, and I know their child’s name.”

Chelsea Green accepts subsidized families and its highest rate is $22 a day. Cereghini said it will be “devastating” if the province’s CWELCC program ends and the centre is forced to go back to its $45-a-day fee.

“When you look at what working families are going through right now in terms of trying to buy groceries, trying to put gasoline in their car, having high childcare fees, it’s just not something that’s sustainable.”

Cereghini said making childcare more accessible isn’t just about keeping the CWELCC program stable, but also about ensuring there are enough registered early childhood educators to operate centres.

“It really comes back to educating people who want to get into the field and making the career a field people want to get into and stay in,” she said.

Testani, the province's spokesperson, told CBC News that Ontario has launched a "comprehensive workforce strategy" for registered childhood educators that includes higher wages, better working conditions and career development.

Alquiseed said she has nearly exhausted her childcare options. Daycares are not getting back to her, and none of her family members are available to babysit. She’s started posting in Facebook groups to ask about other options, but still hasn’t found anything.

“I read my post a couple times and I cried each time. I feel like I’m a bad mom,” Alquiseed said. “I’m begging people to tell me if they know anywhere. It shouldn’t be that hard. It’s hard enough that I’m leaving him, this just makes it 10 times worse.”

If Alquiseed ultimately cannot return to work, she said she's unsure how her family’s financial situation will play out.

“I don’t think people understand how awful it is for a family to be struggling to live in this economy to begin with, and now to add this struggle on top of it,” she said.