Ontario's auditor general says the province isn't on track to meet its targets on child-care fees, number of spaces created or percentage of qualified staff within the $10-a-day system.
Auditor general Shelley Spence's office is releasing four special reports today, including one looking at Ontario's progress in implementing the national child-care program.
While several provinces have already lowered parent fees to an average of $10 a day, Spence says Ontario is not on track to meet that based on its current plans.
When Ontario signed the child-care deal with the federal government in 2022, it agreed to create 86,000 new spaces within the system by December 2026 but the auditor says the province only achieved about 75 per cent of its interim target at the end of 2024.
She says last fall the government reworked the way it assigned space creation targets in different regions of the province – instead of focusing on areas most in need of new spaces, it focused on areas that could more quickly create spaces, so Ontario had a better shot at meeting its overall target.
As well, while the number of registered early childhood educators in the system has increased, it's still below the province's target, and while the government estimated in 2022 that it would need 8,500 more ECEs by 2026, the auditor says that has now risen to 10,000.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 1, 2025.
