Here's What Daycare Costs in Toronto: 36% of Spaces Have No Cap

A licensed daycare place for a child under six in Toronto costs $22 a day or less, but only at a centre that joined CWELCC. That is the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care system, which pays centres to charge parents less. At the cap, a full-time month is $478.50: $22.00 x 261 weekdays / 12 months, on Ontario's own 261-day year.

The cap does not reach everyone. We ran the City's licence file for all 1,089 licensed centres and 85,462 spaces. On 36.1 per cent of those spaces, no cap applies. The federal money holding fees down is funded only to December 31, 2026, and no government page puts a date on the "$10 a day" figure.

The prices below are 44 dated fee points, read on August 27, 2026 from 13 Toronto operators, schools and school boards: a sample of posted fees, not a survey. No public City daycare dataset carries a fee at all.

What a capped place costs

Ontario's licensing manual caps the base fee, which is any fee you must pay to get a place and not just the fee for care. It is the lowest of three amounts: $22 a day, the fee the centre charged on December 31, 2024 if it was enrolled in CWELCC that day, or a table amount in the regulation if it was not. A centre already charging under $22 was frozen there, not raised to the cap, which is why so many posted rates sit just below it.

Four of those centres land on $478.50, to the cent: the daily cap as a month. Frozen rates run it backwards. McMurrich Sprouts posts $371.52 a month for its kindergarten room, ages 3.8 to 5 and so still under six, which is $371.52 x 12 / 261 = $17.08 a day. Cornerstone Montessori Prep posts its capped place at $5,808 a year, or $484 a month, with hot lunch, and prints no daily rate. The same table adds $500 in annual administration and workshop fees plus book fees.

What the cap covers, and what it does not

Ontario's manual puts "registration fee, deposits, administration fees" inside the cap, with any fee a parent must pay to get care, even when a billing company collects it. Food counts too, where the regulation requires it for a child under 44 months and the centre makes it mandatory for parents.

So a CWELCC centre cannot charge $22 a day and add a registration fee. It spreads the fee across the cap: a $500 registration fee over 250 service days is $500 / 250 = $2 a day, so the daily fee can only be $20.

Outside the cap sit two categories: anything genuinely optional, and anything charged for breaking the agreement with the centre. The manual's list is examples, not a closed set. Late pick-up beyond the hours in the parent handbook. Bank charges, such as a returned payment. Optional trips, transport, diapers or sunscreen. A fee in neither category is a base fee.

Two centres show the line, lawfully. Queen's Park Child Care Centre charges $10.00 for the first minute past 6:00 PM, then $1.00 a minute. The Wexford sheet labels its $50 returned-payment charge "Non-Base Fee".

Toronto adds two rules: no new mandatory fees after the frozen fee date, and no increase to an existing one. The penalty is provincial, not municipal. The manual says contravening section 77.2 "may lead to an administrative penalty" of $750 times the number of children overcharged, and can reach $100,000.

Who the cap does not reach

The file flags each centre as in CWELCC or not, and gives capacity by age group. Run the two together.

Those are licensed spaces, not children: a licence, not a filled seat. Two exclusions stack. Over six, a child is outside CWELCC everywhere. Under six, they are outside it at any centre that never enrolled.

Which centres stayed out is not random: it tracks who runs them.

A commercial centre is five times likelier to sit outside the cap than a non-profit. Of those 136, 125 (11.5 per cent of all Toronto centres) are in neither CWELCC nor the City fee subsidy, and almost three quarters of those are commercial. There you pay the sticker price with no cap and no subsidy.

Opting out also clusters by area.

One segment carries a third of the opt-outs. Of the 88 licensed centres named "Montessori", 46 are outside CWELCC, or 52.3 per cent, against 9.0 per cent of every other centre. That is a name match in the licence file, not a fee measure, but it tells you where to check first.

Infant space is scarce either way: only 383 of the 1,089 centres have any, and infant rooms are 4,402 of the 85,462 spaces.

The same programme, two prices

Family Day's Wexford before-and-after-school sheet, effective January 1, 2026, prints Schedule A for under six beside Schedule B for over six. Same room, same hours.

The sheet's arithmetic holds in both columns: $14.18 + $4.25 = $18.43, and $32.55 + $9.45 = $42.00. Over six costs $32.55 / $14.18 = 2.3 times under six, for identical care.

Each column is dated. Schedule A covers kindergarten children who were 5 on December 31, 2025, and says those fees run until June 30, 2026. From July 1, 2026, Schedule B covers every child who is 6. Ask Family Day which schedule your child is on.

The City's schedule does the same. Toronto Home Child Care charges $12.69 a day for a kindergarten child and $29.52 for a school-age child, $41.02 in summer and $53.76 for a day over 12 hours.

A birthday triggers the jump, and the City sets the timing. A child turning six between January 1 and June 30 keeps the reduction to June 30, in home child care or a preschool, kindergarten or family age group. One turning six between July 1 and December 31 keeps it to the end of that month. A child in a school-age room gets the shortest version. The City's example: "if a child turns 6 on April 3rd, they are only eligible for a reduction until April 30th and must pay the full fee as of May 1st".

What an opted-out centre charges

Outside CWELCC nothing is capped, including the fees that would be base fees inside it. Every school below is flagged as not participating in the City's licence file, so this does not rest on its marketing.

Bannockburn's $30,700 plus its non-refundable $5,500 registration sits against $478.50 x 12 = $5,742 a year at the cap, registration included.

Mildenhall's $1,500 lunch is not optional. It says taking part "is required by the Ministry of Education for all YPC students who stay full day and all Casa students who stay for lunch". East York Montessori has the same shape. Its page prints $17,000 tuition, less $2,000 it marks "Due upon registration", plus $1,800 for a food programme it calls mandatory. The school bills $16,800 over ten months, or $1,680 a month. The $2,000 due at registration is separate from those ten payments.

Two of the three say why. East York Montessori's page reads: "East York Montessori School is not part of the CWELCC, $10/day program". Mildenhall says it is "choosing to opt out of the CWELLC Provincial Subsidy Program as the program limits our capacity to operate at our current level of excellence", in its own spelling.

Joining later is not a given. The City says there is no CWELCC application intake window planned for child care centres in 2026, against a provincial completion deadline of December 31, 2026.

What the cap is worth, and the date on it

The University of Toronto Early Learning Centre publishes its capped fee beside the base fee it charged before the reductions. It says why: "The child care fee reduction program is dependent on government funding. If the funding ends, the full fee base rates ... will resume".

Its infant room runs at the Glen Morris site only, where non-student care is $478.50 a month against a $2,040 base. Toddler at Glen Morris and OISE is $478.50 against $1,886, preschool $478.50 against $1,449. Part-time infant care is $22.00 a day against $112, so $112 minus $22.00 = $90 a day is funding.

The calendar is why it matters. On December 4, 2025 Canada and Ontario extended their agreement to March 31, 2027. Canada set aside $695 million "to help maintain eligible child care fees at their current average of $19 per day until December 31, 2026". Ontario's Minister of Education said it "will keep fees from rising next year".

The "$10 a day" figure needs the same care. Ontario's agreement page, updated November 18, 2025, says it "capped the reduced fees at $22 per day, bringing the provincial average to $19 per day". It then says: "We are working toward lowering fees to an average of $10 per day". No date is attached. Canada's December 2025 release counts eight provinces and territories at an average of $10 a day or less, and puts Ontario's average at $19, so Ontario is not among them.

After six, nobody caps anything

School-age rooms are 24,530 of Toronto's licensed spaces, and CWELCC has never covered them. Nor does it cover a school board programme. The Toronto District School Board charges $41 a day on instructional days and $64 on other days from September 7, 2026. Its Extended Day Program "is a school board directly operated program and not a licensed child care program", so it "does not participate" in CWELCC.

The step shows up inside single centres. McMurrich Sprouts charges $371.52 a month for its kindergarten room and $751.68 for school age, a jump of $751.68 minus $371.52 = $380.16, and $931.05 in July and August. Alive Montessori charges $22 a day for Casa and $1,650 a month for Lower Elementary at one address.

What replaces the cap here is the City fee subsidy. Ontario's rules cover a child under 13 in licensed care, a children's recreation program, a camp, or "a before and after school program operated directly by a school board". It is income tested, and Toronto runs a waitlist, so apply as soon as you are expecting.

What to ask before you sign

1. Are you in CWELCC? Check the City's licence listing, not the brochure.
2. What is my base fee a day, and what was it on December 31, 2024? A frozen rate below $22 is yours.
3. Which fees are non-base? Only genuinely optional items and charges for breaking the agreement qualify, such as a late pick-up or a returned payment.
4. Is registration, the deposit or the meal programme charged on top? Inside CWELCC it cannot be.
5. What month does my child's reduction end, and what happens to my fee after December 31, 2026?

The City's listing pages give a reason to use them. A centre without a service agreement "is not assessed by the City for quality standards and vacancy information is not collected".