Excerpts

The wait list for a licensed child care space in Waterloo region has reached 15,000 children and is expected to grow, despite nearly $8 million in new funding coming to the region to support growth.

A new report updating regional council on the progress to create new childcare spaces using funding from the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) plan says 4,357 new CWELCC spaces will be created by Dec. 31, bringing the total number in Waterloo region to 20,689.

The province requires the region to allocate funding based on a ratio of at least 90 per cent for not-for-profit spaces and no more than 10 per cent for for-profit spaces, the report says.

Due to the tight timeline to create the spaces, the region's children’s services department says it will allocate the additional spaces to child care programs currently enroled in CWELCC that can increase licensed spaces, including home-based, centre-based, and before-and-after-school programs.

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The Government of Canada and Ontario are currently negotiating the next CWELCC agreement, but no details have been provided about the future of directed growth or information about potential changes to funding for the next term of CWELCC, the region says.