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Sometimes when Lyndsay MacKay picks up her son from daycare, he's just in a diaper.
It's one of the ways staff at his child-care centre try to keep the kids cool, she said.
"The babies seem to have it the worst, their room is the hottest, we pick them up and they're just in diapers," said MacKay, whose 18-month-old goes to a centre located inside a Toronto District School Board (TDSB) school.
"They're hot and sweaty, and my son has had heat rash all summer," said MacKay.
The Toronto mother is joining other parents in calling on the province to set maximum allowable temperatures for child-care centres so kids and staff aren't burning up from "sweltering" heat in centres that don't have sufficient air conditioning.
MacKay said staff, who have been creative in finding ways to cool down the kids, such as using ice cubes for water play and keeping the kids in diapers, are "also really suffering."
"You can see that they've sweated through their clothes, and they're hot, like everyone's hot, and the parents feel so bad for the educators and for the kids, but we also feel helpless," she said, calling it a "clear health issue."
MacKay said central air conditioning hasn't worked at the child-care centre for years, and that the portable air conditioners currently there don't effectively cool the rooms. She added that the portable air conditioners were only installed days into a heat wave in July.
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Carolyn Ferns, public policy co-ordinator with the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care (OCBCC), said she thinks it would be helpful to have a maximum temperature guideline, so it would be "very clear that at a certain point, action needs to be taken."
She said that while the conversation about hot classrooms in schools got quieter during the summer break, child-care centres in schools are operating year-round.
"They're there in the ... height of the summer, the hottest part of the year, and if they don't have sufficient air conditioning, we're talking about babies and toddlers that you know, for whom hot weather can be very dangerous."
The Canadian Environmental Law Association issued reports in April on "extreme heat" in schools and child-care settings, recommending that the province amend a regulation to "include a maximum temperature standard and apply it to all child care facilities" and "amend legislation or guidelines that apply to child care facilities located in schools to include a maximum indoor temperature standard of 26 degrees Celsius."
A spokesperson for the TDSB pointed to the board's web page on how schools can "manage the heat" and directed all other questions to the ministry.
The provincial government took control of the board through the appointment of a supervisor in June.
Education Minister Paul Calandra's office did not respond to a request for comment before publication.