Parents, advocates and Toronto city councillors are vowing to fight the Ford government’s latest budget cut that could wipe out 3,049 child care spaces planned for 51 local schools over the next three years.

“In the 12 months this provincial government has been in place, they have shown that when they get it wrong and people speak out, they reverse course,” said Councillor Joe Cressy, referring to Ford government reversals on autism funding, Greenbelt development and a plan to scrap a 50 million tree-planting program.

“If there has been a lesson here, it’s don’t make bad cuts that hurt people (because) … people will stand up and speak out,” he told reporters at a City Hall news conference Tuesday in advance of a council debate on the issue this week.

“I expect and fully hope (the province) will reverse these cuts because these cuts are impacting children and families, and that’s a line we don’t cross in this province,” said the councillor for Ward 10, Spadina-Fort York. The issue has become personal, Cressy noted, as he and his wife Grace are expecting their first child in November and have already added their name to 12 child care wait lists.

Toronto dietitian Tracy Morris, who is on maternity leave with her first child, is also determined to save the spaces that were slated to open.

“We’re privileged in that we can get on a wait list and if we are lucky enough to get a spot, we can pay for it. It’s not easy, but for a lot of families that is not the case,” said Morris, who joined councillors and advocates at the news conference to decry the cuts.

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Morris, 32, and her husband, a paramedic, have been scrambling to find licensed child care in the city’s east-end Beach area. Monthly fees of about $2,000 a month for a toddler space are more than the couple pays for their mortgage, she said.

According to an April 26 education ministry memo to municipalities, thousands of child care spaces planned for schools over the next three years will no longer be eligible for provincial operating funding.

The province will honour capital commitments to build the daycares only if cities and school boards promise to come up with the operating funds by Aug. 30, the memo said. Under the previous Liberal government’s plan to double the number of child care spaces for kids under age 4 by 2022, the province had promised to pay 100 per cent of operating costs.

A city staff report pegs the cost of covering fee subsidies and other operating expenses for the spaces at about $35 million annually.

But cash-strapped cities and school boards will be hard-pressed to find the money, said Councillor Mike Layton, whose toddler started daycare this week and who knows the stress families face trying to find and afford quality care.

He wants council to call on the province to restore operating funding and to honour all previous provincial funding commitments. Council is also expected to ask the province to extend its Aug. 30 deadline to at least Oct. 31 to give staff time to assess 2020 budget pressures and to prioritize the 51 projects.

“To expect the city to come up with millions of dollars in funding years from now by the end of August … is not fair to our city. It’s not fair to our city staff. And it’s certainly not fair to the parents that will be relying on these spots,” said Layton, who represents Ward 11, University-Rosedale.

An education ministry spokesman said Toronto is receiving more than $461 million in provincial child care funding this year. Municipalities are responsible for planning, managing and co-ordinating provincial child care funding in their communities and “are in the best position to identify local needs when setting budget priorities,” Derek Luk said in a statement.

Ontario is facing a “child care crisis,” said Carolyn Ferns of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care. The province has the highest child care fees in the country, and big cities and small towns alike are reeling from the latest Ford government cut, she added.

In Toronto, the most expensive city for child care, families pay an average of about $20,000 a year, the equivalent of a second mortgage or rent payment, she said. Ninety-one per cent of centres have wait lists and almost 15,000 families are waiting for fee subsidies, she added.

“While the City of Toronto has been making headway on addressing this child care crisis, we now have a provincial government that is making things worse,” Ferns said.

“Families are counting on these centres being built and it’s a tremendous waste of time and money to scrap these projects at this stage,” she said. “We need the province to come back to the table to provide the necessary funding so they can go ahead.”

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Speaking to reporters in his city hall office Tuesday, Mayor John Tory said there are no provisions for the city to make multi-year funding commitments after city budgets are already set. Property taxes are not meant to pay for social programs, he added.

“We’ve had a reasonably successful and expanding partnership with the provincial government in the past and now what we see happening … is a step backward,” he said.

“Clearly this is going in the wrong direction and we’re going to have to take that up with them, which we’re in the process of doing, and I hope that some of the discussions at council will help.”