Upcoming Parent Meeting

 Join our free, non-partisan webinar to get the facts you need to make an informed vote:

 Is CWELCC living up to its goals of affordability, accessibility, and quality care?

Hear perspectives from across the childcare sector—including parents, educators, and providers—on how the program is working in real life. 

Learn how party platforms and federal decisions could shape the future of early learning and childcare—and what that means for your family. 

This session is hosted by ACE, a national non-profit association representing a wide range of licensed childcare providers across Canada, including nonprofit, private/tax-paying, home-based, school-based, owner-operated, and franchise centers.

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

•  Signing our petition: https://aacenational.ca/

• Write to your Municipal, Provincial and Federal representative.  Templates here:  Ontario Templates - Google Drive 

• Share your story. The personal journeys of childcare operators and parents navigating the complexities of funding issues. Share your story here:  ACE - Real People, Real Stories 

In a memo sent to licensed operators in Ontario outlining changes to how the province is funding the $10-a-day program, an assistant deputy minister of education wrote that starting in 2025, non-participating centres will no longer receive routine funding such as “general operating, fee subsidy or wage enhancement grants.” 

We need your voice now more than ever. While we all support affordable childcare, the government's current approach is forcing operators into an impossible situation. We are forced to choose between keeping fees affordable for families and making compromises that would undermine the quality of care we provide—and that’s something we cannot accept. 

Without significant changes, we won’t be able to survive as operators under this system, and families will be forced to pay full fees. To prevent this, we need change, and we need your voice and support to make it happen.

We’ve already raised our concerns with Federal Minister Sudds' office, but they’ve made it clear that their goal is a national, centralized childcare program that would phase out private operators entirely. As Minister Sudds herself stated: “We have seen what happens when we privatize health care—it leads to increased costs, unequal access, and disparities in quality. It wouldn’t be fair to parents or our children to let the same happen with our National Childcare System.”

However, Quebec’s fully government-subsidized Centres de la petite enfance (CPEs), as an example, often praised as a model by proponents of centralized childcare systems, have some of the highest child-to-staff ratios in the country (i.e. 1:8 for 12-18 month olds!), raising serious concerns about quality. Additionally, frequent strikes by educators in Quebec’s CPEs highlight ongoing issues with staff dissatisfaction and funding shortfalls. How can this system be considered a gold standard to model a “National Program”? Private operators, on the other hand, have a proven track record of maintaining high-quality services with better ratios, personalized care, and constant innovation. By adapting to families’ needs, private centers and home daycares ensure children get the attention and support they deserve—something a centralized, one-size-fits-all system struggles to achieve.

This isn’t about supporting your choice as parents—it is about the government taking control of private centers and agencies, moving towards a completely centralized model that eliminates parental choice. They want to make us all government employees and expect us to be content with it. At the same time, they are completely excluding unlicensed home daycares and licensed home daycare providers not affiliated with the CWELCC program because they are private (for-profit). The current model only allows for 30% of CWELCC funding to go to private for-profit agencies or centres, with the other 70% going to government-funded daycares.  My agency is a for-profit agency, and I pay her $300/month to be licensed under her ($3600/yr.).  Government-funded agencies don't charge their providers anything to be licensed under them, but they receive $6900/yr per provider, which comes out of taxpayers' money.  

I have joined thousands of childcare operators across Canada who have joined a National Coalition to raise awareness during the week of October 21-25 about the issues created by the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Childcare Agreement (CWELCC). While CWELCC was intended to make childcare more affordable, the agreement came with federal government strings attached that are choking operators and limiting access, resulting in thousands of waitlisted families. In this inflationary environment, operators are struggling to maintain quality care, and the new framework in Ontario—a similar one to be rolled out in other provinces in the short term—has only intensified these challenges.

In Ontario, operators (centers and agencies) must decide by the end of the month whether to opt in or out of the new CWELCC guidelines. Those who opt-out will not only lose CWELCC funding, but also the low-income families of such centers will lose their subsidies and the ECEs will lose their wage top-ups—both are supports that existed long before CWELCC. 

Ultimately, we believe that funding should go directly to you—the families—through a voucher system, giving you the freedom to choose the center or home daycare that best fits your needs, without unnecessary restrictions. Operators shouldn't be caught in the middle. By shifting funding to families, we can ensure your choice is respected, while still protecting affordability, accessibility, and quality care for all families, free from government overreach.

Thank you for standing with us in this important fight.

To the Federal Government:

As a national coalition of childcare operators, we have launched a petition demanding that the current federal government (or the next) respect provincial constitutional jurisdiction and remove the ideological strings attached to CWELCC funding. This will empower provinces to develop models that truly serve their families—free from federal government ideological interference.

To the Ontario Government:

We are calling on Minister Dunlop and the Ontario government to engage with childcare operators to find an interim solution that works for all parties until federal reforms can be made, whether by the current government or the next. Additionally, we urge the Ontario government to put pressure on the federal government to push for these necessary reforms. Furthermore, we demand that if a center chooses to opt out of the CWELCC program, this decision is respected. The Ontario government must ensure that subsidies for low-income families and wage top-ups for frontline educators remain in place, as they existed long before the CWELCC was introduced.

Parents, we need your support!