Excerpts
The City of Toronto has hit a “bottleneck” for the child care spots it subsidizes, officials say, with increasing affordability driving up demand faster than new spaces can be built and brought online.
Annual budget documents show the city handed out 7,700 fewer child care subsidies than it had planned to in 2025, even as the wait-list for subsidies hit just over 16,000 children.
Toronto’s children’s services division administers child care subsidies on behalf of the provincial government, which sets the rules for the program. The subsidies are in addition to Canada’s national child care program, which has rates of $22 a day.
Depending on income, subsidies can take the cost below $22 a day, $12 a day or to zero.
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On the ground in Toronto, McNamee said staff were coming up against the lack of spaces. The city had planned to offer 30,700 subsidies for child care last year, but only managed to offer 23,000.
The city said the wait-list for a child care subsidy space is 16,020.
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