Monday, December 8, 2025

Mr. Matthew DesRosiers

This is me again? Cost-based funding is now in its first year. Obviously, as I said, as we’re good public servants, we want to make sure that we monitor and make sure that the parameters that we’ve put in place, based on the data that we did have, were appropriate, and we’re going to continue to do that. The benchmarks in cost-based funding: Like I said, on the centre side, you’ve got program staffing, supervisors, operations, accommodations—those all get put into one sort of global budget because we don’t know exactly how businesses are going to incur those costs and we give them that flexibility to make sure they can run their business the way they need to. We did gather lots of data. I think, through the standardized financial report, we’re going to continue to drill down and really make sure that we understand what’s driving those costs in Ontario. Like I said, on the program staffing side: What are the wages actually paid, what are the supports, what are the obligations, what are the benefits and things that are getting paid, any other staffing costs—that will really allow us to see analyze whether those benchmarks are appropriate, make tweaks if they’re not and that’s regular. I think we also want to see what some of the outcomes of the cost accountability measures that have been introduced are going to do as well and see what impact that has on costs, as we try to make sure that there is some standardization where there can be, but there’s still enough flexibility in the system to accommodate costs where they’re not.

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The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

MPP Firin.

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MPP Mohamed Firin

Ontario is a big province with a lot of different geography. How is the ministry incorporating the realities of urban, rural, suburban and northern communities into its conversations with municipal partners as planning for space expansion continues?

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Mr. Matthew DesRosiers

I was starting to answer a little bit of this before. We do have those geographic adjustment factors in place that do recognize the broad impacts that geographic location can have on cost. We can have differing regional rents. You might have different local markets. Electricity costs might be different—food prices etc. So what we’re trying to do with those geographic adjustment factors is make sure that that broad geographic impact is accounted for, but the way that the system is set up with benchmarks and top-ups allows for variation within that as well. The other thing that we have, when it comes to growth at an even more drilled-down level geographically, are these growth top-ups. Again, if you’re a new operator, you can see what the benchmark allocation would be, but there’s then this multiplier that sits on top of it to give you a little bit of extra funding to go and support that growth. That looks at what the costs are, differentiated by each SSM, so we can see, for example, in the Kitchener-Waterloo-Barrie economic region, that the region of Waterloo typically has more costs than the county of Simcoe, for example. So that allows for an operator trying to decide where they want to set up—they can see that the higher costs that they might incur in Waterloo would be accounted for if they set up there, or if they want to set up in Simcoe, they would get less funding, but they can see that in advance and they know.

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The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

Two minutes remaining.

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Ms. Holly Moran

The other thing I would say is that the CWELCC agreement has entirely upended the market for child care, particularly the directed growth strategy that the ministry put in place. If you think back to before CWELCC, a child care operator, where margins are not large—people aren’t making millions and millions of dollars doing child care—would go to the neighbourhoods where there was sufficient affluence to be able to guarantee that there were markets for those high-priced child care spaces. So the Leslieville and Riverdale neighbourhoods in Toronto, for example, would be very popular places where you would see child care density—lots of families, lots of means to pay. When we entered the directed growth program, all of a sudden, the money wasn’t there in Leslieville; the money was now moved to more different neighbourhoods where child care wasn’t typically marketable pre-CWELCC. So now, as we’re funding it with the operating funding and the directed growth strategy comes behind, that shifts both for-profit and not-for-profit programs into those areas where child care has been lacking.

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MPP George Darouze

What’s our time?

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The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

You have 40 seconds remaining. Are you still continuing?

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MPP George Darouze

Okay. We’ll move on.

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The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

You’ll move on? Okay. Interjections.

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Interjection

I’ll save the 40 seconds.

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The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

All right, no problem. Okay, we are now moving on to the second and final round for the third party. MPP Fairclough, you have 20 minutes.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Thank you very much, Chair. I just want to go back to a quick question on access and francophones in Ontario. Can you tell me what the current access rate for francophones is in Ontario and the number of spaces relative to the francophone population?

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Ms. Holly Moran

It will take us a moment to pull that up out of our—it’s reported publicly, annually, in our annual report. Whitney is going to be taking a look at that. I do know, anecdotally, the access rate for francophones tends to exceed the population rate for those children. As we looked at it in the agreement, you’ll see in the agreement our term was to maintain or improve our existing access rate, because it does exceed that demographic. In comparison to the anglophone access, the francophone access is better. It looks like it’s a small number; I think it’s around 8%. I would have to check. Some 4% of the population identifies French as their first language—I think we had it at about 8%—and our agreement terms say specifically that we should maintain or improve that. So it’s not that we are behind in the francophone. As I said earlier, we have an access problem right across the province, whoever you are, whatever you are. But that, I think, is actually in the annual report.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

That’s great. What are the measures that you take to ensure that the staff are French-language speaking as well?

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Ms. Whitney Wilson

Maybe I’ll speak to, first, the number of spaces. As of 2023-24, which is the most recent publicly available data we have, it’s 38,402. I can tell you, even though it’s not published, that we have seen an increase to that for this year. We haven’t publicly posted the number of spaces, but it has increased. And then for bilingual it’s 8,291. There are a number of ways that we support francophone ECEs and recruitment and retention. Our most popular program in terms of recruitment is the qualifications upgrade program. That is a grant program that provides educational, travel and training grants. It does prioritize francophone, First Nations, Métis and Inuit individuals that apply. I think that since the inception of that program, they’ve provided 29,000 grants. That is one way to take folks that are already in the sector—they might be director approved—and have them build upon their existing qualifications so that they can become registered. It also helps with their registration of fees. That is one of our francophone-specific programs.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Great. Thank you. I appreciate going back to that.

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Ms. Holly Moran

I can add a little bit onto that.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Sure.

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Ms. Holly Moran

The question was, how do we ensure that the educators that are serving the families are francophone? Each one of the SSMs is required to have a French-language services plan as well, under the terms of our transfer payment agreements with them. In those French-language services plans, we measure their capacity to serve the francophone population in their area, and if they’re under capacity, they have to have measures to improve. The other thing that we do to support those programs is—we understand there is a shortage of ECEs in the province. In particular in areas where cultural or language preferences are really part of the essential fabric of the program, we have what’s called a director approval. If the person doesn’t have an ECE degree, they can have essential qualifications that fit with the fabric of the program and they have qualifications in other areas. Maybe they’re an OCT; maybe they’re something else. They can be director approved. We do see a higher proportion of director approvals in francophone or cultural programs because of the fabric issues in those programs. So you will see that in the auditor’s report, in terms of a conversation about director approvals. Director’s approvals are also categorized under our regulation as qualified staff. As Whitney mentioned, we are at 66% over the target in the agreement when you include those other qualified staff.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

That’s great, thank you. I will come back to some of those workforce issues. I wanted to ask, again, about the deal that was negotiated; it was a one-year deal. I’m also interested—you know, there was a choice made to go very public about the fact that there was no deal about a week before the federal election. Parents all received notifications, and it was a very public display of the fact that we didn’t have a deal in place going ahead. I wanted to ask: Was that the advice given to the minister by the bureaucracy, that that was the best strategy? What other advice had you been given about getting to a multi-year agreement with the federal government? It just felt like interesting timing, and it put a lot of parents on edge. As you’ve said, we had more than a year to still negotiate that. I’m curious if there was any other advice given to the minister at that time.

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Ms. Denise Allyson Cole

I’m sure you’ll appreciate that I can’t say publicly all the advice the ministry gives the minister. What I can say is that in our conversations with the minister early on, when he was appointed to the portfolio, we did engage in conversations around the fact that, unlike other jurisdictions, we would need to reach an agreement sooner rather than later, because we’re the only jurisdiction where our funding ends December 31 with what we need to flow to the municipality. We also have a regulation—and Holly can correct me here if I get all the details—that requires us to communicate and set the rate in regulation publicly as well. So we were very conscious of the clock ticking. The minister is the kind of person that believes that parents should have certainty and that parents should have some predictability. You asked a question early on about the $10 a day, and the reality is, given where things are right now—as I said earlier, it’s an aspirational goal and it’s going to be a stretch for us to get there. I can’t speak for the minister, but I think it’s fair to say that it was around giving parents some transparency and certainty, and giving operators some transparency and certainty as well. We also had been asking at that point in time for the federal government, that we really need to get to the table.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Okay. I just thought it was curious timing. We were a jurisdiction that was almost a year later than most in signing, and then we used our funds up faster than other jurisdictions as well.

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Ms. Denise Allyson Cole

None of that was a surprise for the federal government. We talk to them just about every single day, it feels like that—

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Ms. Holly Moran

[Inaudible] negotiations of the original agreement, in terms of how far the funding would go in Ontario and what our plan was. We had to negotiate the action plan; the action plan was quite clear about what would happen in year four, in year five and in year six as renewal.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

My next question really builds off the comment that was made about how you had the allocations in Peel—a real area of need. Mostly, providers weren’t interested because, from their perspective, it wasn’t paying enough. I was a little frustrated with the answer, which is: We used to have a 70-30 split on the not-for-profit versus for-profit. To me, this is wise use of taxpayer money and programs like this, and the reaction has been to say, “We need to renegotiate this to make this viable for private providers.” Some of you may know that I’ve worked in health care all my life, and I’ve seen the same trend in health care, where we’ll pay public hospitals a certain rate and then we’ll pay private pharmacies, private clinics higher rates because it’s the only way they’ll do it. But yet we still expect our publicly funded, not-for-profit entities to be able to make this work. I kind of wanted to just come back to that issue: How do you really get to a system that is making the best use of public dollars? One might argue that this isn’t necessarily the place for lots of profits. How are you balancing this as you’re developing out the funding formula etc. that you’re using? Because if I heard correctly, it’s like, “We needed to adjust because the private providers needed more money.”

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Ms. Holly Moran

No, no, no.

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Interjections.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

No?

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Ms. Holly Moran

Not at all. A unanimous no. I would say, the funding—

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

That was like, “Lee, no.”

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Ms. Holly Moran

Are we on the record? Did we say, “No”? The funding formula actually is agnostic in terms of whether you’re for-profit or not-for-profit. It’s based on the operating capacity and the operational features of your program.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

So you haven’t raised the rates to make it more palatable for private providers to be part of this program?

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Ms. Holly Moran

No, no, no; not at all.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Is that true?

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Ms. Holly Moran

Absolutely true.

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Ms. Denise Allyson Cole

We’re agnostic.

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The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

Ten minutes remaining.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Have the rates gone up, though, because of that issue?

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Ms. Holly Moran

The rates of?

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

The rates that we’re actually providing to these daycares to participate in the program.

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Ms. Holly Moran

The funding increases as—you know, you can go ahead and take this. The funding increases as the costs—I can’t think of the name of it—increase as well, but it’s agnostic in terms of whether you’re for-profit or not-for-profit.

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Mr. Matthew DesRosiers

That’s right. So if the question is, have the average rates provided for both not-for-profits and for-profits increased under the system relative to 2022, when they were largely artificially low, as many operators we know had held their fees low to help families through the pandemic—but yes. The average rate we anticipate will be higher, but not by—it will be a few percentage points higher, and it will be now at around 8% versus at 4%. But one thing that we saw in the data was, prior to the cost-based funding, the distribution of margins was the same; the average was the same. So they were already no differences there. We’ve maintained that. So there is no bonus for a for-profit operator in this versus a not-for-profit is what my colleagues are saying.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Okay.

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Ms. Whitney Wilson

Maybe I can clarify, though, in terms of the auspice and how that flexibility was applied. I think you can imagine that in a four-year program, there are a lot of things coming online for the sector at once. One of those things was the infrastructure funding that was announced in 2023 from the federal government, but it didn’t quite get to us—and, therefore, the SSMs—for almost a year and a half later. Around that time where we were asking questions about the need for flexibility and the ability to meet targets, we hadn’t fully funded—or flowed out—a lot of the infrastructure funding, and that seems to have supported the not-for-profit sector in terms of their ability to create space and grow. But it’s really more about making sure that we’re able to balance the need to create the space targets that are built into the agreement and the capacity of the sector to actually meet those growth targets and build. So that’s the flexibility. We didn’t take Peel up on the need for that flexibility, but because that was happening around the same time, we needed to account for both things.

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Ms. Denise Allyson Cole

If I may, as I said, we are agnostic on the profit versus non-profit, but I think it’s important to point out that the majority of the for-profit sector in Ontario are small operators, and I think 96% of the for-profit market has only one or two sites. So we’re not talking huge corporations.

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Ms. Holly Moran

Generally, female-owned small business.

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Ms. Denise Allyson Cole

Yes, female-owned small businesses.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Okay, thank you. I’m happy to hear these answers, so it’s important to me that we use taxpayer money to buy a service, and I don’t think there should be differences regardless.

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Ms. Denise Allyson Cole

Sorry, the other thing is—because we’ve had this conversation as we’ve chatted with the federal government—Ontario, as well, is the only jurisdiction to have the regulated child care workers. So when you look at the qualifications, whether it’s not-for-profit or for-profit in Ontario, we have a pretty high standard.

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Ms. Holly Moran

We have one of the highest standards in the country. I think we were in PEI together when the Alberta government stated that their ECEs are qualified with four months of post-secondary education and ours have two years. Minister Dunlop’s head snapped around at one point.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

I’m going to move on because I think I’ve got six minutes. I just want—

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Ms. Denise Allyson Cole

Sorry.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

No, no; that’s great. I’m very glad we explored all of that. So as of October 2024, 47% of the SSMs are using a privately owned digital system called One Human Service Network—is that true?—to provide a central platform for parents to search for available child care spaces. Does the ministry encourage SSMs to use this system?

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Ms. Holly Moran

No.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

No? And Toronto is one of the biggest cities in the province where they’re not using this system. So you’ve not asked them to use that system.

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Ms. Whitney Wilson

No, we don’t direct them on how to maintain wait-lists, and many don’t maintain a central wait-list for an SSM at all.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Okay, that was actually my next question. Do you give any kinds of directives or guidelines to them on how best to manage wait-lists and streamline application processes?

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Ms. Whitney Wilson

No. It’s very much directed by the service system manager. Some of them decide to use independent platforms to manage a central wait-list and require that. Some do not have them at all. Some of them only allow it for some operators. It varies greatly across the province.

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Ms. Holly Moran

Within our funding guidelines, however—

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Can I ask a quick question, though, just on the system? Because I think the Auditor General has indicated that the ministry is actually working on developing a website and it’s supposed to be completed by 2029, with implementation in 2027. Why is the ministry developing their own system, then, when more than half are already using that other online system? Are there going to be many more benefits of that new system rather than using the existing?

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Ms. Whitney Wilson

Yes, absolutely. The digital tool—the implementation begins in 2026 for public-facing, but the ability to search and apply and the wait-list functionality would be 2027. The difference is that right now, we don’t have a centralization of wait-lists. We have some regions where each individual operator maintains their wait-list. In some areas, they have a OneHSN-type system. They use it differently, and there’s nothing consistent across the province. When we did our initial phases of discovery, we did hear from families that it’s a very confusing system to navigate. You can imagine that if you’re on the border of an SSM, you’re going to be dealing with one huge system or you’re also going to be looking at different operators and their own individual lists. One of the things that we heard was that there was a need to simplify the navigation process. The flip side to that is that we need to be able to collect data consistently. Each of those systems, each of their processes, individually collect different information and look at different factors. We have no way to understand unique demand across the province as a result.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

What will be the cost? Do you have a dollar amount that will go into that system, unlike the business case of just using something that—

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Ms. Whitney Wilson

Unfortunately, because we’re subject to the procurement directive and the RFP just closed, I can’t share more about the cost yet.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Okay—for a follow-up.

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Ms. Holly Moran

What I would add about the prioritization of wait-lists: We don’t give them direction in terms of which system to use, but we do include in our funding guidelines direction around which populations within that list of fee subsidy applicants they might want to prioritize. For example, women fleeing gender-based violence, the caseloads for Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support and referrals from children’s aid societies are the list of folks who can be prioritized within that existing fee subsidy wait-list.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Okay, that’s great. How am I doing? Interjection.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

I’ve got two more minutes. All right. I was going to ask about the RECEs. Maybe I will just ask this one question because we’ve had some discussion. The RECEs are supposed to be held accountable by a professional college. Who holds the director-appointed employees accountable?

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Ms. Holly Moran

Maybe I can ask Karen to take this one, in terms of the process for approving—

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Because there’s quite a number right now in Ontario until we can train—yes.

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Ms. Karen Puhlmann

Hi, I’m Karen Puhlmann. I’m the director of the child care branch. Staff that can be considered qualified under the ministry’s regulation are typically RECEs, as you’ve noted, but they could also be, for older age groups, people that have other education credentials: part of the Ontario College of Teachers and those kinds of things. But they can also be approved by a ministry director. When I say a ministry director, I mean one of our regional managers that is out across the province that is licensing managers. Really, director approvals provide child care programs the opportunity to operate in situations where they have been unable to do so. This might be because of emergency absences, if there is a short-term absence because of a parental leave or something like that. They might have specialized program needs like Holly spoke about. There are also things like a shortage of qualified staff. So in terms of the oversight, when we approve those folks, we—

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

My question is who the oversight—sorry to jump in.

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Ms. Karen Puhlmann

The oversight? Sure.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

The oversight for the people making the decision to appoint them.

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Ms. Holly Moran

They’re ministry staff.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Right? As I understand it, the directed, appointed employees—somebody makes that choice. Who’s overseeing them to ensure we’ve got consistent quality?

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Ms. Denise Allyson Cole

At the end of the day, it’s my neck on the platter.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

It’s what, sorry?

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Ms. Denise Allyson Cole

It’s my neck on the platter.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Oh, it’s yours. Okay.

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Ms. Denise Allyson Cole

They’re ministry employees.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

They’re ministry employees. Okay.

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Ms. Karen Puhlmann

Yes. But there is a comprehensive process that we go through in order to make the decisions. We look at registries to ensure that they haven’t had any offences or anything, or any issues with the Child Care and Early Years Act. We look at their educational credentials. We look at—

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The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

Thank you. We’re at time. We now move to the second and final round for the official opposition. MPP Armstrong, you have 20 minutes.

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Ms. Teresa J. Armstrong

Thank you. Ontario is one of only two provinces that haven’t committed to implementing a wage grid for child care workers, instead opting for a wage floor. This was criticized at the time of its implementation for being inadequate for attracting and retaining staff needed to meet the CWELCC expansion goals. Now that the Auditor General has reported an estimate that the province needs about an additional 10,000 RECEs by 2026—1,500 more RECEs than the province estimated when the program began in 2022—will the government commit to implementing a wage grid system that would standardize and increase wages for child care workers based on their qualifications and experience? Noting that we are not a highly paid—we’re not one of the ones that are paying our workers the highest nationally.

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Ms. Whitney Wilson

Sure. Maybe I’ll just clarify a few pieces in there. The 10,000 number that is quoted by the Auditor General is just RECEs. Right now, that does not reflect the current complement of our staff in Ontario. As mentioned before, we do have qualified staff, RECEs and director-approved. If you look at the 10,000 staff needed for RECEs, I think that’s not a number that really matches the need in the province in order to staff the spaces that we have. If you look at the minimum requirements and the current complement of ECEs and director-approved, we actually do not need more staff. However, because we usually staff above minimum requirements for things like vacation and breaks and stuff like that, the number needed is actually only 4,500. After the implementation of the workforce strategy, we have seen significant increases in terms of ECE college diploma program applicants and enrollees—I think that’s up 25%—and applicants for registration with the college are now up 32%. So, in fact, I think we have a much smaller workforce gap and trends that are showing a really positive increase towards meeting that gap. I apologize. There was a first part of your question that—

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Ms. Denise Allyson Cole

I can take that. I can’t speak on behalf of the government in terms of what future direction the government may or may not take, but we do continue to look at the compensation in the sector and, as I indicated earlier, it will be going up again January 1.

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Ms. Whitney Wilson

Maybe if I can just add one more thing to that: Since the introduction of the workforce strategy, as of the end of 2024, the number of full-time program staff RECEs earning below $20 has been reduced by 99%. So one third of program staff RECEs in full-time programs were earning less than $20 before the workforce strategy, and that has essentially been eliminated with that.

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Ms. Teresa J. Armstrong

I do appreciate that change to the compensation. We did push for that quite a bit. The wage floor for RECEs is set by the Ontario government. As you mentioned, it was $24.86 and it’s going to be increasing, you had mentioned—was it March or January?

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Ms. Denise Allyson Cole

January.

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Ms. Teresa J. Armstrong

—in January to $25.86, but the estimated hourly living wage necessary for the GTA in 2025 is $27.20. How does the wage floor ensure that RECE jobs are well-paying when it does not even cover the basic needs of our most populated region? And does the wage floor attract or retain staff? I’ll add to that, because I know that RECEs, when they get into the field, actually leave quite quickly afterwards, so retention is a big issue. I just wanted to get some clarification on the fact that the basic needs in this area are $27.20 for a living wage in the GTA and how the wage floor doesn’t really meet that. How do you compare that to attracting and retaining RECEs going forward for the number we need?

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Ms. Holly Moran

Maybe I can start answering that question and then I can turn to Whitney for the other components of the workforce strategy. The wages that were settled on in the workforce strategy—the sector had long called on us to make parity with the wages for the RECEs who are working in full-day kindergarten classrooms and whose wages are set through collective bargaining with the school boards that they’re employed by. What this second generation of the workforce strategy did was put those starting wages on par with the collectively bargained employees employed by our school boards in the RECE category of the full-day kindergarten classroom. So that also served to stem some of that retention because what child care programs were finding was that the natural exit opportunity for them was to go into the full-day kindergarten classroom with a more manageable workday and a better wage. So, by setting the wage floor the same, we’ve at least taken a bit of a crack on one of the drains in the system, which was within our own control as well. I think the province is one of the biggest employers of RECEs, either in school boards or in child care as we go. Many of these programs in child care earn in excess of that wage floor because they’re collectively bargained. We have a few municipalities who directly operate, and they pay their RECEs much above that wage floor because of the collective bargaining that’s been going on there. It is a wage floor; it’s not a wage average. I think the average for the wage-floor RECEs in the sector is much higher than that, but when you can speak to the other components of the program, there may be some of those spaces as well.

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Ms. Whitney Wilson

Yes, absolutely. In 2023, we did do some extensive consultations before we implemented and developed a workforce strategy to make sure that it was informed by the sector. I think we consulted with 61 stakeholder groups to get a sense of what was needed in order to recruit and retain within the sector. From that, we heard a suite of things, and we wanted to ensure that there was a strategy that responded to that suite of requests, not just wages. We did hear that there was an important emphasis on recruitment but that we had to fix kind of the leaky bucket that you mentioned in order to make sure the sector remained stable. From that, we did develop a workforce strategy. It had a five-point plan that focused on better wages and working conditions, so that was bringing the floor up, aligning it with kindergarten, as well as implementing and maintaining the professional development day that is intended to ensure that there was ongoing professional development for RECEs, as well as other program stuff. There was significant investment in support for career laddering and entry into the profession. I had mentioned earlier the qualifications upgrade program, so really enhancing the base funding there to ensure that more folks were getting grants to go and upgrade their credentials. We also expanded the ECE programs for private career colleges and opened that up. There was a significant investment in an innovation fund. That was to make sure that there were locally driven decisions made about how to recruit and retain staff on the ground in services to managers. There was continued support for the dual credits program. That is a high school credit program that attracts high school students into some of these careers. I believe there was an additional 180 students added to that program in 2023-24. There were some employer-centred reforms to ensure that staff were really in the positions needed most and some of the youngest folks had the RECEs where they needed them, and building the profile of the RECE profession—so we insitially intended a more province-wide campaign that since has been broken down so that there are locally driven promo campaigns to recruit and retain staff within the regions. We continue to participate in federal, provincial and territorial engagement tables on workforce strategies. We recently lead one on interprovincial and territorial mobility and foreign credential recognition. And then, on top of that, we continue to do monitoring and assessment of the strategy. It has been actually only a short time since the strategy has been introduced. We are seeing, as I mentioned, significant impact, so reducing the lowest wage earners by almost 99%. But as these things come through and as they develop more, things like higher applications to the college, things like higher applications to the ECE programs—all of those will continue to come to fruition and we’ll continue to monitor their impacts on the sector.

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Ms. Teresa J. Armstrong

I also introduced a bill which didn’t pass through Legislature for committee. But one of the things that you mentioned was that there was a promotional campaign in that workforce strategy. Can you provide an example of what promotional items the government produced for their awareness campaign and how much the government spent on the promotional campaign? I ask that because I don’t recall seeing any, so it would be interesting to find out that information.

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The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

Under 10 minutes remaining.

Official source

Ms. Whitney Wilson

The promotional campaign funding went directly to service system managers so that they could develop local promotional campaigns. That was part of their most recent allocation. The workforce strategy is staggered in terms of—I think we heard from service system managers that they had a lot on their plate in terms of implementation. So this is still something that is in development. One of the considerations for that was that there was a national campaign being developed at the time as well, so we really wanted something to complement at a local level in terms of what the needs were. As we mentioned before, some of those needs might be francophone ECEs. Others might need Indigenous or First Nations ECEs. Because of that, we went to a more local level, and so those will still be produced over the next year.

Official source

Ms. Teresa J. Armstrong

Thank you. I seem to recall that there was a couple of—in the first presentation, you said that there was going to be a new initiative to provide funding for promotional to SSMs. Is that the same initiative that you’re talking—

Official source

Ms. Whitney Wilson

Yes, it is.

Official source

Ms. Teresa J. Armstrong

So it’s not a new initiative. It’s the same initiative as in 2023?

Official source

Ms. Whitney Wilson

It’s the initiative under the workforce strategy.

Official source