Premier Doug Ford’s government will spend up to $48 million per day to repay parents for child-care costs during any work stoppage from teacher strikes.

The daily subsidies of up to $60 per child will be funded by savings from not paying the salaries of educators while they are on the picket lines.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce made the announcement Wednesday, hours after the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario said its members in Toronto, York and Ottawa plan to walk off the job on Monday.

Catholic teachers are staging a daylong strike on Tuesday across the province, the same day public high school teachers will walk off the job in 13 boards, including Toronto.

“There is still a pathway to get a deal” and avoid the upcoming strikes, Lecce told reporters at Queen’s Park when pressed about the growing tensions with teachers’ unions.

“I hope in my heart in that we can get a deal that is a win-win-win proposition” for teachers, boards and the government, he said.

Sam Hammond, president of the elementary teachers’ union, accused the government of “trying to bribe parents to get their support.”

New Democrat MPP Marit Stiles (Davenport) said the province should put as much “energy” into avoiding strikes as it is into developing plans for coping with work stoppages.

Lecce said the child-care reimbursements will help support families because “we recognize the impact of union escalation on families is real, and unions expect hard-working families to bear the costs of their cyclical labour action.”

No receipts are required for the payouts — which are also retroactive for any work stoppages already this school year — and are set at $60 per day per child up to six years old in any school-based daycare that’s affected by a strike. Compensation is set at $40 for kindergarten students, and $25 for students in grades 1 to 7.

Families of children with special needs, from kindergarten to grade 12, can receive $40 per day.

The payments will come from the potential $60 million in daily savings if all teachers are on strike.

Parents have to register online to receive the compensation. On Wednesday alone, about 12,000 had done so.

“We think this little bit of relief is going to help them,” Lecce said.

The last time Ontario parents received such payouts was in 1997, when the Conservative government provided $40 per day, up to a maximum of $400, for a two-week protest that shut down schools.

In British Columbia, the Liberal government repaid parents $40 a day in 2014.

Kimberly Clark of Markham said she has no plans to seek reimbursement, despite being eligible for $50 a day for her children who are in grades 4 and 5.

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“I would much better see that money go to schools,” she said, calling it a “ploy to win over parents.”

Toronto’s Stephanie Kirby works part-time and has flexible hours, and said she will stay home with her two children.

“I just don’t see how someone like me would qualify,” said Kirby, whose children are in grades 2 and 4. “But for people who run the risk of financial hardship because of having to pay for additional days of daycare, I can see why they would apply for it.”

However, Kirby said she’s tired of “the rhetoric coming from both sides — the finger-pointing is constant” and urged both sides to “reach a deal “as quickly as possible.”

The Ontario elementary teachers’ union sent a memo to its 83,000 members early Wednesday, saying “unless the government makes an immediate effort to engage in serious talks, ETFO will have no option but to further escalate our strike action.”

Because the teacher unions also bargain for support and professional staff in schools, Catholic, French and public boards can all be affected by just one union’s job action.

On Monday, Toronto public and Catholic schools will be affected because the elementary teachers’ union represents early childhood educators there, as it does for the Ottawa-Carleton and York Region boards.

The Toronto Catholic board will be hit two days in a row. It says full-day kindergarten classes will run as usual on Monday, but all of its schools will close Tuesday because of the province-wide Catholic teacher strike.

The public elementary teachers’ union is expected to announce more boards to be targeted in a daylong strike on Tuesday, which will mean three teacher unions off the job that day.

Meanwhile, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation says it will take a hiatus from daylong strikes after next Tuesday until the end of exam period.

The only teacher union currently bargaining with the province and school board associations is the AEFO, representing teachers in Ontario’s 12 French-language boards.

With files from Rob Ferguson and Isabel Teotonio