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CWELCC guide · autumn 2026
One space, three payers, one base fee.
A subsidized child in a CWELCC centre generates money from three directions: a parent contribution the family pays you, a subsidy payment the service manager pays you, and cost-based funding. The first two add up to the same reduced base fee a full-fee family pays — which means both of them are base fee revenue, both reduce your CWELCC allocation, and a parent contribution you fail to collect is a straight loss the funding formula will not give back.
The split
The Ministry's own example, and the part of it that is now out of date.
The provincial Local Priorities Guideline works through a family with one child, a parent contribution of CA$30 a day calculated under the income test, and a space that cost CA$100 a day before the centre joined CWELCC.
| A CA$100 space | Before CWELCC | From Dec 31, 2022 | From Jan 1, 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base fee under O. Reg. 137/15 | $100 | $47.25 | $22 (the cap) |
| Parent contribution | $30, from the income test | $15 — halved | $15 — still below $22 |
| Fee subsidy to you | $70 | $32.25 | $7 |
| CWELCC | — | $52.75 | $78 |
| Total revenue on the space | $100 | $100 | $100 |
The left-hand side of that table is the part you bill, and it is right: a reduced base fee of no more than $22 a day, split between the family and the service manager, with the service manager paying whatever the family's contribution does not cover.
The bottom row is the part to stop reading as arithmetic. Under the old per-space model, CWELCC genuinely was the remainder of the full-cost fee — $100 less the reduced base fee. Since cost-based funding began in 2025 it is nothing of the kind. Your CWELCC money is a program cost allocation built from provincial benchmarks, plus an amount in lieu of profit or surplus, less a base fee revenue offset. It is not computed from your old market rate, and no part of it is attached to a particular child. The $78 in the last column describes the economics of the space; it does not describe a payment you can expect to trace.
The short version
Parent contribution plus fee subsidy equals your reduced base fee, capped at $22 a day. Both halves count in the base fee revenue offset. Collect one half late or not at all and the offset is unchanged — you absorb it.
The parent contribution
You do not calculate it, and you must not discount it again.
The parent contribution comes out of a formula in section 10 of O. Reg. 138/15, administered by the service manager. Social assistance recipients — income support under the Ontario Disability Support Program Act, 1997, and income assistance under the Ontario Works Act, 1997 where the parent is employed or in employment assistance activities — are fully subsidized without an income test at all. Everyone else is income tested on "adjusted income" as defined in section 122.6 of the Income Tax Act, which is the net income line from both spouses' returns, taken from the most recent notice of assessment or Canada Child Benefit notice.
- Adjusted income of $20,000 or less: nothing. The same if the monthly figure the formula produces is under $10.
- Above $20,000, full-time care: the monthly contribution is [(A × 0.10) + (B × 0.30)] ÷ 12, where A is the slice of adjusted income between $20,000 and $40,000 and B is the slice above $40,000.
- Part-time care: that monthly amount divided by (days per week × 4.35).
- Then the CWELCC reduction, under s. 10 (5): A ÷ B × C × 0.5, where A is the amount from the formula, B is the number of children it covers and C is the number of those children who are CWELCC-eligible and enrolled with a participating licensee. A family with a 4-year-old in a CWELCC centre and a 7-year-old in before-and-after care gets the 50% on half of the contribution, not all of it.
Work one through. A family with one child and adjusted income of $55,000 has A of $20,000 and B of $15,000, so the formula gives [($20,000 × 0.10) + ($15,000 × 0.30)] ÷ 12 = $541.67 a month. One CWELCC-eligible child halves it to $270.83. The service manager sets the daily figure that reaches your confirmation notice; using the 21.75 care days a month Peel applies when turning a monthly fee schedule into a daily rate, $270.83 is roughly $12.45 a day against a $22 base fee — so the family pays about $12.45 and the service manager pays you about $9.55.
Two adjustments are easy to miss because families, not centres, raise them. Section 11 requires the service manager to reduce adjusted income by unreimbursed expenses related to a parent's disability or a child's special needs, and — since O. Reg. 390/25 — by any Canada Disability Benefit included in it. Section 12 lets a family apply mid-year for a recalculation if adjusted income has fallen 20% or more. Neither is automatic; a family whose circumstances changed in March has to ask.
The operator-side rule is the one that costs money when it is missed. In Peel the parent contribution has already been halved on the Confirmation of Child Care Subsidy notice. The guideline's wording is that you do not have to apply an additional reduction and that parents must pay the amount in the confirmation notice. A centre that applies its own 50% on top of an already-reduced figure under-bills every month, and nothing in the reconciliation puts that back. In Halton the reduced amount arrives on the Children's Services Form (CSF30) approval letter; Halton calculates it through OCCMS.
There is no $12 floor for a subsidized family. The $12-a-day floor that can stop a full-fee reduction short of the full 50% does not apply to the parental contribution reduction — a subsidized family's contribution can and does fall below $12.
Why it is an accounting question
Subsidy revenue is base fee revenue, and the offset only moves one way.
Peel's guideline is explicit: both Child Care Subsidy payments and payments by families are included in your base fee revenue offset and reduce your CWELCC funding. Halton defines actual base fee revenue as the amount earned from families and fee subsidy revenue for eligible children. Toronto's base fee revenue offset is the revenue expected from parent and family fees "and/or fee subsidy".
So filling a vacancy with a subsidized child does not change the funding arithmetic. The same $22 arrives; it simply arrives from two payers instead of one.
What does change is your collection risk, and the offset is deliberately asymmetric about it. At reconciliation your actual base fee revenue offset is the greater of what you earned and what was expected. Earn more than expected and your funding falls, and you cannot use the surplus to cover costs above your program cost allocation. Earn less and the expected figure is still used — except, in Peel, in cases of extenuating circumstances, which is why a centre running a high vacancy rate is told to talk to its Early Years Specialist rather than wait for April.
Read those two together and the uncollected parent contribution is the worst line on the page. It is base fee revenue you were assumed to have earned, so the offset deducts it from your allocation whether or not it ever reached the bank. In Peel the responsibility is stated plainly: you collect the parent's contribution, and you collect any balances owing on it, including fees due because the family no longer receives subsidy. Where a family withdraws owing you money, tell the Children's Services Worker — if they reapply for subsidy later, they must make a repayment agreement with you before the application is approved. That is the only real leverage in the system, and it only works if the balance was reported.
Two receivables, one revenue line
A subsidized space produces a receivable from the family and a receivable from the service manager, both settling the same exempt supply of child care. Keeping them in one account makes the month-end impossible to read and the FAIR harder to support. Keeping them in two makes an arrears conversation possible while it is still worth having.
Not HST-able, still useful
Child care is exempt, so no HST is charged on either half. But subsidy paid by a municipal service manager is government funding, which matters to a non-profit centre's 40% test for the public service bodies' rebate — see the HST guide.
New for 2026 in Peel
Absence days went from 36 to 85, and the codes collapsed into one.
Peel's 2026 CWELCC guideline sends you to the Service Provider Handbook for the absence rules, and the handbook changed underneath it: version 2, published August 2026, records absence day changes made in February 2026. The allowance is now 85 absence days per child per calendar year, up from 36 in the January 2024 handbook, and every absence — sick, vacation, appointments, family time — is reported as a single code, (A). The old health-related and other categories are gone. Unused days do not carry over.
This is worth checking against your own handbook and your own attendance practice, because the figure most widely published is still the old one.
| The day | Does Peel pay? | Does the family pay? | Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| Child present | Yes — approved daily rate less the parent contribution | Yes | P |
| Child absent, within the 85 | Yes | Yes — the contribution is due for every absence, whatever the reason | A |
| Child absent, beyond the 85 | No | Yes — you must collect the full reduced fee (market rate less 52.75%, capped at $22), crediting anything already paid for that day | A |
| Statutory holiday | Yes, for the nine Peel lists — New Year's Day, Family Day, Good Friday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, Labour Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Boxing Day | Per your handbook | H |
| Centre closed — PD day, Easter Monday, Civic Holiday, winter break | Only if you charge full-fee families, and only if the closure was reported | Per your handbook | O |
| Snow day for a school-age child who cannot get to the board programme | Yes, at the approved full-day school-age rate, where you provide full-day care | Per your handbook | O |
| Start date delayed | Up to 10 absent days before the child attends; after that, treated as a withdrawal without notice | Per your handbook | A |
| Family withdraws without two weeks' notice | Up to 10 days at the approved rate less the parent's portion, unless the space is filled | Per your handbook | W |
Peel monitors the count and says it will warn you and the family as the limit approaches, but the attendance record it monitors is the one you submit. A child absent 20 consecutive days for any reason has to be reported to the Children's Services Worker on the twentieth day.
In Halton the closure-day rules carry their own subsidy limb: an operator may claim fee subsidy for an approved child for up to 20 closure days a calendar year, and parental contributions may continue to be collected for up to 20 closure days. Charge families for a statutory holiday closure and that holiday counts toward the limit. Monthly closure days go on the Web Record of Attendance in OCCMS.
The money mechanics
An advance is not revenue, and the correction window runs both ways.
In Peel the subsidy cycle is monthly and it starts with attendance. OCCMS web attendance opens on the first calendar day of each month carrying the previous month's schedule — June's on July 1 — and must be completed and submitted by the ninth business day. Submit late and payment may be delayed. Payment is processed once the schedules for every site under the head office have been submitted and verified, and it is contingent on verification of enrolment and attendance records.
Four features of that cycle land in the books rather than on the floor:
- Advance payments are on account. You may opt in to a monthly advance, paid in the first 14 days, set as a percentage of your total subsidy for the month based on the previous month's payment. The remainder follows the regular process. An advance is a payment against a month not yet reported, so it belongs on the balance sheet until the attendance is verified — not in revenue, and not netted against the following month without a schedule that shows why. Opting in or out needs ten business days' notice before the first of the month.
- The Centre Payment Detail Summary is the reconciliation document. It becomes available once attendance is verified and sets out the payment, including adjustments. Peel asks you to review it within 30 days so errors are reported by the deadline.
- You have three months to report an error; Peel has twenty-four. Over- and underpayments must be reported within three months of the payment date. Peel may adjust prior payments up to 24 months from the date of written notice. The asymmetry is the reason to reconcile the summary monthly rather than at year-end — and the reason a subsidy receivable from an earlier year is not a dead file.
- Placement changes belong with the worker, not the schedule. Report a change as it happens rather than at month end. If the schedule is already open and a placement is wrong or a child is missing, it has to go to the Children's Services Worker for review and approval before you submit — changes reported after submission may be paid late.
The CWELCC side of the same attendance submission is aggregate rather than per child: vacancies, operating capacity, waitlist, full-fee children receiving the CWELCC reduction, full-fee spaces, and any use of alternate capacity in the comments field. Home child care agencies report active homes there too. One form, two different reporting logics — which is why the attendance file and the funding file need to agree before either is filed.
Rate traps
Your approved daily rate is not your base fee, and your discounts travel.
In Peel the Municipal Approved Daily Rate is the rate you charge the Region for a subsidized child, set by age category — infant to 18 months, toddler 19 to 30 months, preschool 2.5 to 4 years, kindergarten 4 to 5 years, school age 6 to 12 — and visible in GovGrants. It is the maximum Peel will pay, and you cannot charge the parent of an approved child a fee that exceeds it. For a CWELCC-eligible child the fee is capped at $22 a day in any event, inclusive of registration and every other mandatory fee: if your daily base fee is already $22, you cannot charge any mandatory fee at all.
Three details sit underneath the rate and are easy to get wrong.
- Discounts apply to the municipal rate too. Any discount you offer on market rates — multiple siblings, staff children — must also be applied to the municipal daily rates. A sibling discount is therefore not only a reduction in what the family pays; it reduces what the Region pays you for a subsidized sibling.
- Mixed age grouping pays by age, not by room. Peel pays the approved rate for the child's correct age group regardless of the programme the child is placed in, and placements outside the intended age group must be temporary and short term.
- The 6-to-12 programme is where market rates still matter. If you are in CWELCC, fees for children 6 and under are fixed by the regulation and the guideline. For 6-to-12 programmes you set market rates through your own business process and may apply for a municipal rate increase. Peel will not pay a municipal approved daily rate higher than your market daily rate for those programmes, converts monthly fees at 21.75 days for a five-day week, and may review continued funding eligibility where market rates rise sharply, rise twice or more in a year, or outpace the Consumer Price Index over twelve months — with 30 calendar days' notice of any decision. Move your rate increase period and you wait 18 months for the next one.
Turning six
When a subsidized child ages out of CWELCC, Peel pays your approved 6-to-12 municipal rate without the CWELCC fee reduction and issues an updated confirmation notice with the new parent contribution. Eligibility runs to the end of the month in which the child turns 6, and you must tell families at least two months before it ends what the fees will be afterwards.
Kindergarten
A child eligible for full-day kindergarten is not eligible for subsidy for full-day care on instructional days. Subsidy may be approved for before and after school care on instructional days, and for full days on PA days and March break. Halton puts it as a flat rule: subsidy can no longer support full-day kindergarten spaces, because kindergarten is available through the school system.
By service manager
The same provincial formula, three different machines around it.
| Question | In Peel | In Halton | In Toronto |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where the reduced parent contribution is told to you | Confirmation of Child Care Subsidy notice, already reduced by 50% | Children's Services Form (CSF30) approval letter; calculated through OCCMS | Through the placement and payment processes of Toronto Children's Services |
| Absence days paid | 85 a child a calendar year, all coded (A), no carry-over | Not a published per-child allowance; up to 20 closure days claimable, with contributions collectable for up to 20 | Not addressed in the funding requirements guideline |
| Attendance and claim | OCCMS web attendance, by the ninth business day of the following month | Web Record of Attendance in OCCMS, monthly, including closure days | Operating Information Online Form annually; monthly payment processing after about the 20th |
| Can you limit subsidized enrolment? | Not addressed in these terms; placements are coordinated by Children's Services Workers | No. The funding agreement says the operator shall not cap or limit the number of children receiving fee subsidy, nor refuse enrolment because a child is approved for it, and the Region may require subsidized families to be prioritized or vacancies held | Not addressed in the funding requirements guideline |
| Non-CWELCC and 6-to-12-only operators | May apply for a municipal rate increase through the regular process | Existing subsidy agreements at non-CWELCC centres serving 0 to 5 continue until the child ages out or leaves | Must still submit the Operating Information Online Form; no cost-based funding estimate is generated, and 2027 rates for ineligible age groups are to be confirmed |
One provincial rule cuts across all three. Since January 1, 2025, fee subsidy cannot support a family whose child is enrolled at a centre or agency serving children aged 0 to 5 that is not enrolled in CWELCC. The exception is a subsidy agreement that already existed, which may continue until the child ages out of the programme or leaves voluntarily.
It is also worth knowing why a family's subsidy exists, because operators are the ones asked. The provincial policy statement recognises a parent's need for employment, education or training, and a child's own need — a child with special needs, or a social need referred by a children's aid society, public health unit, physician or another recognised agency. A child can be eligible on their own need even where the parent has none. The amount of care subsidized follows those recognised needs, which is why two families in the same room can have very different approved schedules.
Between now and January
Dates in the next eight weeks.
| When | What | Where |
|---|---|---|
| November 2, 2026 | 2027 Operating Information Online Form closes for child care centres. Every licensee receiving fee subsidy must submit, including those not in CWELCC and those running 6-to-12 programmes only. Fees reported are checked against your approved fee information and parent handbook | In Toronto |
| November 12, 2026 | October OCCMS web attendance due | In Peel |
| November 30, 2026 | 2027 Operating Information Online Form and Annual Provider Information Form close for home child care agencies. Late submission may delay the January cost-based funding payment | In Toronto |
| December 10, 2026 | November OCCMS web attendance due | In Peel |
| Any month-end | Review the Centre Payment Detail Summary within 30 days; report any over- or underpayment within three months of the payment date | In Peel |
| December 31, 2026 | Absence day allowances reset; unused days do not carry over. Last day eligible costs count toward the year | All |
Toronto's 2027 guideline carries a disclaimer on its first page: it is a draft and remains subject to change as the Ministry's funding guidelines are updated. The submission dates are the operative part of it. Peel published its 2026 CWELCC guideline in December 2025 and revised the Service Provider Handbook in August 2026, so a Peel centre working through this autumn is working from those two documents — and they do not always agree, since the guideline points to the handbook for the absence rules and the handbook has since changed them.
Quick answers
What operators ask us.
Do we apply the 50% CWELCC reduction to a subsidized family's contribution?
No. In Peel the contribution on the Confirmation of Child Care Subsidy notice has already been reduced, and the guideline says you do not have to apply an additional reduction and that parents must pay the amount in the notice. In Halton the reduced figure arrives on the CSF30 approval letter. Applying your own 50% on top of a reduced figure means under-billing every month, and the reconciliation will not restore it, because the base fee revenue offset uses the greater of what you earned and what was expected.
Does taking subsidized children reduce our CWELCC funding?
Not compared with taking full-fee children. Both the parent contribution and the subsidy payment count in the base fee revenue offset, and together they come to the same reduced base fee a full-fee family pays — capped at $22 a day. The funding difference between a subsidized space and a full-fee space is nil; the difference is in who you invoice and what happens if they do not pay.
A family has used all 85 absence days. What do we charge?
In Peel, the full reduced fee, the same as a full-fee family: the market rate less the 52.75% CWELCC reduction, capped at $22 a day, with anything the family has already paid for that day credited against it. Peel will not pay the approved daily rate for absences above 85. The parent contribution itself is due for every absence day regardless of reason, inside the allowance or outside it.
How should we book the monthly subsidy advance?
As a payment on account, not revenue. The advance is a percentage of your total subsidy for the month based on the previous month's payment, paid in the first 14 days, before the attendance for that month is submitted or verified. Revenue is earned as care is provided and the amount is settled when attendance is verified and the Centre Payment Detail Summary is issued. Keeping the advance on the balance sheet until then is what makes the summary reviewable inside Peel's 30-day window.
A subsidized family left owing us the parent contribution. Can the Region pay it?
No. In Peel you are responsible for collecting the parent's contribution and any balances owing on it, including fees due because the family no longer receives subsidy. Tell the Children's Services Worker the amount owing at the time they withdraw: if the family reapplies for subsidy, they must make a repayment agreement with you before the application is approved. That is the practical reason to report the balance rather than write it off quietly.
We give a sibling discount. Does that affect the subsidy we are paid?
In Peel, yes. Any discount offered on market daily rates, including for multiple siblings or for staff, must also be applied to the municipal daily rates — so the Region pays the discounted rate for an approved child. Worth modelling before a discount is advertised, because the cost is not only the fee the family saves.
Our centre is not in CWELCC. Can we still take subsidized children aged under 6?
Not as new placements. Since January 1, 2025 fee subsidy cannot support a family whose child is enrolled at a centre or agency serving children aged 0 to 5 that is not enrolled in CWELCC. Subsidy agreements that already existed may continue until the benefiting child ages out of the programme or leaves voluntarily. Fee subsidy for 6-to-12 programmes is unaffected by CWELCC enrolment, and in Toronto a subsidy-only licensee must still file the Operating Information Online Form.
Can we cap how many subsidized children we take?
In Halton, no: the funding agreement provides that the operator shall not cap or otherwise limit the number of children receiving fee subsidy, and shall not refuse enrolment to a child on the basis that the child is approved for fee subsidy. The Region may also establish policies prioritizing subsidized families and may ask operators to hold vacancies to help coordinate placements. Peel's and Toronto's funding documents do not put it in those terms, but placements are coordinated by the service manager in both.
Sources: O. Reg. 138/15 (Funding, Cost Sharing and Financial Assistance) under the Child Care and Early Years Act, 2014 — ss. 8 to 12, the income test and the 50% parental contribution reduction; Ontario Ministry of Education, Chapter 3 Division 1: Local Priorities Guideline (November 2025) — Part 7.5 fee subsidy, Part 7.6 parental contribution reduction and the worked CA$100 example; Chapter 3 Appendix 1: Policy Statement — Access to Subsidized Child Care (November 2025); Chapter 2 Division 2: CWELCC Cost-Based Funding Guideline (July 2026) — the base fee revenue offset and the treatment of amounts paid on behalf of families; Region of Peel, 2026 CWELCC funding guideline, centre-based — sections 3.1, 4.3, 4.6, 4.7 and 12.1; Region of Peel, Early Years and Child Care Service Provider Handbook, version 2 (August 2026) — Appendices A, B and C, municipal and market daily rates; Region of Peel, child care important dates (revised August 4, 2026); Halton Region, CWELCC guidelines for child care operators (April 2026) — fee subsidy requirements, closure periods and fee subsidy, parental contribution reductions; Halton Region, Early Years and Child Care Funding Agreement 2026–2031 — section 7; Toronto Children's Services, 2027 Funding Requirements Guideline (draft, updated October 2026). Fee subsidy administration, absence allowances and rate rules differ by service manager, Peel's figures above are Peel's own, and Toronto's 2027 guideline is a draft subject to change. General information, not advice for your situation.
Subsidy payments not tying to your attendance?
Call 647-870-8498 or email info@ghayurtax.com. We keep the books for licensed centres and home child care agencies in Peel, Halton and Toronto, and we reconcile the monthly payment summaries to attendance and to the base fee revenue the reconciliation will assume.