The government takeover of child care is reaching a crisis point in Ontario. This week, child-care operators are participating in rolling closures to protest the provincial funding formula and the inflexibility of the federal program. Daycare operator and industry group leader Jacky Sheppard of Peel Region estimates 30 or more daycare centres are taking part. Krystal Churcher of AACE National, a national committee of child-care operators, said she didn’t know exactly how many Ontario centres would be closed but “it’s a lot.” AACE National is organizing two protests of its own this week, one at Queen’s Park on Tuesday and another at Parliament Hill on Thursday, where it says “hundreds of child-care providers, parents and supporters will gather to make their voices heard.”

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Matthew Lau: Government-run daycare is a disaster. Is anyone surprised? Back to video

The protests and rolling closures follow months of child-care providers and parents voicing their intense frustration with government child-care policies. In September, about 90 child-care operators convened in Vaughan to discuss the damage caused by the government takeover. In another Vaughan meeting in October that was attended by over 500 parents the operators highlighted how the government program took choice and control away from parents and private providers. A similar meeting to raise awareness among parents was held in Peel last week.

Earlier this month, several Ontario child-care facilities closed their doors for a day to protest government child-care policies. Muskoka daycare director Anya Kerr, who closed to protest alongside staff and parents, says that as a result of the government’s funding model she has “already had to make cuts to our quality programs, services for families, and nutrition costs … With the proposed changes, we will have to lay off staff we need to support inclusion of special needs children and make further cuts to our program.” Her centre is closed again this week so she can attend the Queen’s Park protest.

Some child-care centres have already exited the government’s $10-per-day program and, with increasing government interference in their operations, dozens more across Ontario are said to be exploring the possibility. In fact, some parents in the Greater Toronto Area recently received letters from their daycares warning they may do just that. Little Kids Daycare Center in Oakville explained in its letter to parents that the government is expanding its control over child-care operations and “places significant restrictions on how we can allocate funds, which limits our ability to invest in our centre in ways that benefit the children, families, and staff.” Its owner, Debbie Cunha, says she supports child care affordability but “we won’t accept a federal takeover.”

Other child-care providers have expressed similar concerns. A letter to parents from Trust Child Care in Toronto says the federal child care program “appears to be a vehicle for the expropriation of largely family-run small businesses.” Meanwhile, another letter to the provincial government from Carron Standoloft, a child-care director in the Georgian Bay area, says recent policy changes have caused her 26-space daycare in Owen Sound to permanently close.

Child-care operators and parents aren’t the only ones sounding the alarm on the combined federal and provincial bungling of child care. In a recent letter to the federal government, the Peel Regional chair said federal quotas limiting for-profit daycare expansion were “restricting the creation of new child-care spaces” and have “led to a waitlist of more than 2,000 child-care spaces that cannot be approved.” Bobbi Ann Brady, the independent MPP from Haldimand-Norfolk, writes that “the number of young families contacting me who cannot find child care for their babies and toddlers is unprecedented. The waitlists are very long and complicated.”

In addition to closures, protests and large in-person meetings of child-care operators and parents, numerous webinars and other virtual meetings organized by AACE National in recent months have brought together child-care providers and parents from across Canada to raise awareness of the negative effects of the federal government’s actions. More than 1,200 parents registered for AACE’s webinar last week in which child-care providers described how the government takeover has led to revenue constraints, lack of support for special needs children, an administrative burden that diverts resources away from actual child care, exploding waitlists, staffing shortages, cost-cutting at child-care centres at the expense of quality, and limitations on flexibility as a result of government-imposed control.

That Canada’s government takeover of child care is causing such chaos and catastrophe for parents and child-care providers cannot be a surprise. Have you ever heard of a government takeover of a sector that wasn’t a catastrophe?

Matthew Lau is a Toronto writer.