The Ontario government will start consultations on bolstering the provincial child-care workforce, as the province looks to attract more people to the profession ahead of demand for the service spiking coming off the multibillion-dollar deal with the federal government.

Consultations will start this summer, according to Education Minister Stephen Lecce's office.

Lecce and his department are working alongside the Ministry of Colleges and Universities to boost the amount of homegrown talent providing care to Ontario's under-six population, the age cohort covered by the deal.

The government is also looking to pitch new immigrants on working in Ontario's child-care sector, something Lecce told his fellow ministers at a child care meeting in Vancouver earlier this week. About a third of Canada's child care workforce is comprised of immigrants or non-permanent residents, according to Statistics Canada, compared to a quarter in the broader labour force.

Federal Families Minister Karina Gould held a roundtable discussion with provincial ministers responsible for child care on July 11 and 12. The ministers agreed to establish a working group where they'd share information and work together to advance the deal's priorities.

The ministers talked about concerns around the child-care workforce, a federal source said, which is a huge looming issue, according to experts.

"We need more qualified early childhood educators. Governments can't build new spaces without tackling the big problem of who's going to be working in those spaces," Morna Ballantyne, executive director of Child Care Now, previously told QP Briefing. "And that means you're going to have to address the workforce and develop a workforce strategy."

The sector is in perennial trouble due to low wages. The experiences workers faced during the pandemic — not to mention inflation and gas prices — only exacerbated such shortages, said Nikki Martyn, program head of early childhood studies at the University of Guelph-Humber.

In Ontario, program staff who are registered early childhood educators will make at least $18-an-hour in 2022, up to $21-an-hour in 2025. For supervisors and home care visitors, the floor is $20-an-hour and the maximum is $23-an-hour. Both are eligible for one dollar per year raises, up to a maximum of $25-an-hour.

Carolyn Ferns, public policy and government relations coordinator at the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, is happy the government is consulting on a strategy, and said pay is the most important variable.

"The child-care workforce crisis is driven by low pay," she said. "Any workforce strategy has to address compensation, wages and benefits."

The existing wage floor is too low, and the money in the deal isn't enough to bring it up to snuff, she said. Child-care workers in Canada make significantly less, on average, than workers in other occupations. In 2015, StatCan data shows, the average annual income of child-care workers was $24,100, less than half of other workers. Registered early childhood educators in Ontario, though, make slightly more than their counterparts in other provinces.

The federal-provincial child-care deals were mainly focused on getting to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's $10-a-day pledge, but dollars were also dedicated to reinforcing provincial child-care workforces. It only applies to certain workers in the child-care sector.

"In fiscal year 2021 to 2022, Ontario invested a total of $206.5 million provincially and $75.5 million in federal funding to support the early years workforce," according to the text of the deal.

Some of the money the province got from Ottawa — in a separate one-time transfer laid out in the 2020 fall economic statement — has been passed on to municipalities, who've used it in a variety of ways. Toronto has launched some tuition-free programs at schools like George Brown.

Ontario launching child-care workforce consultations this summer

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