Four years into $10/day program, child-care waitlists growing in some Ontario cities

TORONTO — When Angela Zhu was newly pregnant, she knew that finding a daycare spot in Toronto would be challenging so she and her husband joined 40 different waitlists, thinking surely that would be sufficient.

It wasn’t.

“My friend joked to me, ‘As soon as you get the positive pregnancy test, don’t even wait to have an appointment with your doctor. As soon as you have that, start emailing’ … and I did that,” she said.

“We have a genuinely scary-looking spreadsheet.”

But still, a year after giving birth to her son they only had one offer – for a daycare 30 minutes out of the way, for a start date nearly a month after she was supposed to go back to work.

They took it, and Zhu counted herself as lucky to even get that spot, as it is part of the national $10-a-day program that lowers the fees parents pay. It was only this month, after 1 1/2 years of the extra commuting for daycare, and more than three years after joining all those waitlists, did they finally get a spot in their neighbourhood.

While about half of the provinces are offering average fees of $10 a day, Ontario has not yet met that goal, with fees capped at $22 a day – still significantly lower from upwards of $70 for some spots before Ontario joined the program four years ago.

But some parents and at least one prominent child-care advocate are urging Ontario to worry less at the moment about further lowering fees to $10, and instead prioritize expansion.

An initial surge in demand created by the more affordable fees starting in 2022 saw many child-care waitlists skyrocket, and four years later, the problem of access has become critical in certain regions.

The province was supposed to have created 86,000 affordable spaces by this year under the deal with the federal government, but has so far fallen short at just shy of 60,000. Ontario’s financial accountability officer has estimated that the demand spurred by lower fees would put the need for new spaces closer to 220,000.

Demand has become so intense at one Toronto daycare that it has had to close its waitlist on more than one occasion. The operators of Blossoming Minds say that before the COVID-19 pandemic their waitlist was usually between 300 and 400 children, and since the introduction of the $10-a-day program it has surpassed 700.

“The centre turns over maybe 50, 60 children (a year),” said director Maggie Moser.

“You have to figure, if we have 700 names on our list, in two years 600 of those people will not get a spot.”

A spokesperson for Education Minister Paul Calandra said Ontario is committed to expanding access to affordable child care.

“As lower fees have increased demand, we continue to work with local service system managers and operators to bring more spaces online as well as the federal government to ensure program sustainability,” Emma Testani wrote in a statement.

In the Region of Waterloo, one of several communities across the province with centralized waitlists, there are about 15,000 children waiting for a child-care space, a 200 per cent increase since 2021.

In Thunder Bay, the number of children on the waitlist has more than doubled since 2021, with 1,235 alone waiting for an infant space – a third of them listed as needing care soon.

Ottawa, meanwhile, has seen a 300 per cent increase in the number of families seeking child care since 2019, with about 8,500 children currently on the central waitlist. The city said it is meeting about three quarters of the demand and needs to add about 7,400 new spaces in order to fully meet it.

Between 2023 and this year, Ontario allocated about 2,900 spaces to the city under the provincial expansion plan.

“The city continues to allocate the remaining spaces using an evidence-based approach and prioritizing equity and inclusion, and is actively advocating to the province for additional ($10-a-day program)-funded spaces to better support Ottawa families,” Jason Sabourin, the city’s director of children’s services, wrote in a statement.

Hana Park, a mom to a two-year-old son, saw the child-care situation in Ottawa as so dire that she and her family moved to Gatineau, Que. She could not find any spaces that were part of the program anywhere near where they lived in Ottawa.

Park, who works for the federal government, said she was excited when the $10-a-day program rolled out, with the newfound affordability a major factor in her decision to have a child.

“So going in it, I was extremely hopeful,” she said.

“Going through it, I felt battered. I can’t explain it. I felt drained. It’s almost like a second job in order to find a daycare on a daily basis, and then coming out of it, I felt extremely defeated because I had to literally, physically move provinces to afford having a child and not quitting my job.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 15, 2026.

Allison Jones, The Canadian Press