By: Michelle Lee

Over the summer, B2C2 has been actively gathering information through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and informal inquiries to better understand how child care is being delivered and expanded across Ontario. Here’s where things stand:

School Board FOIs

• We sent FOI requests to all 72 school boards asking about:
  • How demand for before- and after-school programs is determined for 2025.
  • Whether programs operate in shared or dedicated space.
  • The impact of CWELCC and changes in third-party operators.
  • Barriers to expanding programs for children ages 0–4.
• So far, we have received 34 responses and are continuing to collect the rest.

Provincial FOIs
We also submitted requests to the Ministry of Education, focusing on:

• Director Approvals: How often non-RECE staff are approved to fill RECE roles, broken down by region, auspice, and role type.
• Child Care by Auspice: The breakdown of public, non-profit, and for-profit child care centres and home child care agencies, including CWELCC enrolment and new openings since 2022.
• Funding Benchmarks: Key reports and data behind the province’s funding allocations (including cost drivers, market rent studies, and space-per-child calculations). An extension has been granted, with responses expected in mid-September.
• Pay Equity & Wages: Records on pay equity allocations, CWELCC wage guidelines, and analyses of sector wages. We have reformatted this request to make responses more efficient.

Informal SSM Inquiries

• We asked Ontario’s 46 Service System Managers (SSMs) about child care subsidy use, waitlists, expansion progress, and resource allocation.
• To date, we have received 6 responses and are awaiting the remainder.

Next Steps
We expect the outstanding school board responses within the next few weeks, provincial FOI responses by early September (with some later due to extensions), and more informal data from SSMs over the fall. Together, this information will give us a clearer picture of how child care demand, access, and expansion are unfolding across Ontario.