St. Thomas Mayor Joe Preston called out the provincial and federal governments on March 26, questioning their funding model for building new daycare spaces.
Council approved a $3.3 million project on Thursday to build a new 49-space licensed child care center – to be operated by the YMCA of Southwestern Ontario – on City-owned lands at the corner of Avon Road and McGregor Court.
The project responds to the Government of Ontario’s planned expansion of licensed child care spaces through the Canada Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement .
The agreement aspires to create 86,000 new spaces across the province by the end of 2026, with a focus on supporting high-needs communities like St. Thomas. St. Thomas was allotted 701 spaces to expand the system here.
For the child care centre approved Thursday, however, top tier government funding covers $2.8 million of the project costs, leaving $550,000 to be picked up by the city.
“I know the crisis we’re in for childcare, and it kind-of is in our lane, as is the crisis of housing, but I’m not sure if we can continue to take these sizes of deficits on everything that we do from a childcare point of view,” said Mayor Preston. “I’ll continue to share that message provincially because this is their lane.”
The City of St. Thomas is the Service System Manager for St. Thomas-Elgin, as designated by Ontario’s Under the Child Care and Early Years Act.
There are about 34 licensed school-based daycare centres in St. Thomas-Elgin, about 2,471 school-based daycare spots and about 164 home-based spots, according to a 2025 city report.
About 175 St. Thomas-Elgin families were served by daycare subsidies in 2025, as some 62 percent of subsidy families earn less than $40,000 a year.
There were 1,787 unplaced St. Thomas-Elgin children on the 2025 daycare waiting list, up 5.3 percent – or 90 children – compared to 2024.
“I’d like to remind the folks at home that the deficit on this project is still one whole point in taxes in our community for us to do something that is drastically needed,” added Mayor Preston, “but it’s a bunch of other stuff that one point in taxes could really cover.”
He said the City will continue to lobby Provincial authorities through the Association of Municipalities of Ontario to expand childcare funding, specifically through the department of education.
“We’re doing the right thing (approving the 49 new spaces),” added Mayor Preston. “This is a crisis in our community and more people can get to work if we can do more of this, but I’m not sure how much more of this we can do on the taxpayers of the City of St. Thomas. We need to make sure that we’re getting well compensated from the federal and provincial governments.”
By Joe Konecny, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on Apr 01, 2026 at 07:13
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