A proposal to end a rent-control agreement for city child-care facilities could cause the costs to families to spiral upward, say critics of a budget proposal.
The children's services department has recommended the cancellation of a 12-year agreement with area school boards that covers the rent of 373 school-based child-care centres and family resource centres.
The current agreement costs the city $5.8-million a year, and the new plan would result in a saving of about $3.2-million by 2011. But the savings would come in the form of a $2-a-day increase for parents who pay full fees, and critics of the plan say there is nothing from stopping those costs from going even higher.
Without rent control, cash-strapped school boards could double rent charged to child-care facilities, a cost that would be passed on to parents.
"You're taking a lid off rental agreements that have kept the cost down," said Jane Mercer, executive director of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care.
The current rental agreement was negotiated by the city in 1998, a measure intended to stop school boards from steadily increasing the rent charged to child-care programs within their walls.
"Imagine if there hadn't been any rent control on the child-care programs in our schools over the last decades," said Ms. Mercer. "These are boards who are desperate every year to balance their budgets. It's easy to see how they could have hiked the rents every year."
She predicts that rental rates will double if the plan is approved, and said the impact will be felt at other child care centres as well.
With the current agreement in place, child-care centres that are not housed in schools have been able to negotiate with their landlords, threatening to move into a rent-controlled school space if their costs increase. Without that threat, landlords will have nothing stopping them from increasing rents every year.
This would certainly result in some facilities closing down, said Ms. Mercer, who hopes city council will scrap the proposal.
"They understand how seriously under funded and fragile the system is," she said. "We can not believe that city council would let this happen."
An increase in rates could be the final straw for many families already struggling with the cost of child care.
At Sarah Couture McPhail's mommy group, child-care costs are already a major topic of conversation.
"We just can't believe how expensive it is," she said. "It's basically like paying another mortgage."
Ms. Couture McPhail and her husband, Jeff Irving, have two-year-old twin boys, Sascha and Gabriel.
They have been attending a YMCA child care housed in Shirley Street School, near Dundas Street West and Dufferin Street, for more than a year. The rates started at $57 per day for each child, and the couple does not qualify for subsidies.
"It's almost three quarters of my wage," said Ms. Couture McPhail. "We're basically living month to month."
So far, improvements to the city's child-care system have not been mentioned as a major platform initiative by any of the city's mayoral candidates. But Ms. Couture McPhail said it will be a factor in how she and other parents cast their vote.
"They haven't been talking about it," she said. "It seems to be totally under the radar, and that's got to stop."