Bill 10 has passed - law as of Jan. 2016

[CrazyEight]

Just so all Ontario providers are aware, Bill 10 passed in it's Third Reading today. The liberals and the NDP voted in favour of it. Expected, but still disgusting.

It still has to have Royal Assent, which can happen anytime in 2015 apparently, but it will become law as of Jan. 2016 unless something very unexpected happens.

Lisa MacLeod (PC MPP for Nepean-Carleton, and one of our biggest supporters) has said she is planning on bringing forth a Private Member's Bill to amend Bill 10. As of now, we don't know what that is, when it will happen, or if it can do anything to change this. We'll have to wait and see, but as of now, come Jan. 2016, ALL Ontario providers will have to abide by the new restrictions, or face fines of up to $250,000.

To recap, the 3 main changes to Ontario providers will be:

1) Raising the age of a "child" from age 10 to age 13. This means that any children over age 10 that you have in care will now count as one of your 5 allowed children.

2) All providers will have to count their own children under age 6 in their total allotment of 5 children. The LIBs did make one concession in amendments, and have said that providers' own 4 and 5 year olds in FDK WON'T count, but only if the provider has LESS than 2 under 2. So to make your own 4 or 5 year old not count, you can only have ONE under age 2 in care. We also have no idea if that's just while they're in school, or if that also includes PA days, Christmas and Summer break, etc. That will have to be cleared up when they hammer out all the regulations, so stay tuned for more on that in the coming months.

3) All providers will now have to abide by 2 under 2, including provider's own children. If you will have more than 2 children under age 2 after Jan. 2016, you will have to terminate the extras. There has been no mention of a "grace period" (for example, you have 3 under 2 for only a month until someone has a bday or something) so as far as we know, it's a strict 2 under 2 rule.

Any more questions, fire away, there's a few of us here who know WAY too much about this legislation now!!