As advocates push Queen’s Park to ensure 100,000 promised child-care spaces are affordable for families and offer decent work for early childhood educators, the NDP has introduced a private member’s bill that would direct new provincial funding to non-profit programs only.

“We have 30 years of evidence and research which documents the direct link between not-for-profit centres and quality early learning and care,” said Kitchener-Waterloo MPP Catherine Fife, the NDP’s education critic.

“For the government to ignore this evidence moving forward would not only be ethically irresponsible but fiscally irresponsible as well,” said Fife. Debate on the bill begins in the legislature Thursday.

The Liberals’ five-year child-care expansion plan, billed as a top priority in last September’s throne speech, would provide licensed space for 40 per cent of kids under age 4, double the amount available today. The government is expected to spend up to $3.75 billion to build and operate the new spots in schools, workplaces and other community settings.

Toronto mother Crystal Hunt, who has used both profit and non-profit child care, said her experience backs the research.

“It was night and day,” says Hunt, who was forced to put her baby Ethan in a for-profit centre last fall until space in a non-profit centre at Seneca College’s Newnham Campus became available in December.

“There was just no consistency of care in the for-profit centre. It was terrible,” she said in an interview. “The centre seemed under-staffed and you could tell there was a significant level of stress among the workers. I often found my son sitting in the middle of the room crying because the staff couldn’t attend to him.”

Ethan, 18 months, is thriving at the Seneca College centre, where staff follow a play-based curriculum and children are served fresh fruit and vegetables, roast chicken breast and other nutritious food, Hunt said.

“At the for-profit centre, it was processed fish sticks, chicken fingers and macaroni and cheese,” she said. “You could see they were cutting corners.”

Currently, about 24 per cent of Ontario’s 350,000 licensed spaces for children from birth to age 12 are in for-profit centres.

However, Fife and other advocates fear that percentage will grow if no limits are placed on the new provincial funding.

Alberta-based BrightPath Early Learning Inc.’s recent purchase of one of the GTA’s largest child-care chains is particularly alarming, Fife said.

BrightPath, Canada’s first publicly-traded child-care company, bought 20 Peekaboo Child Care centres in Halton and Peel regions last September bringing the company’s total number of centres to 76, including 35 in Ontario.

“Child care is not a public service that should be traded on the stock exchange,” Fife said.

“We don’t farm out public education services to corporations,” she added, noting child care was moved to the education ministry in 2012.

“It’s time for this government to acknowledge that child care is a public good and therefore should be delivered in a sustainable, not-for-profit model with the focus on quality.”

A spokesperson for the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario, which lobbies on behalf of commercial child care in the province, was not available Wednesday. BrightPath did not respond to a request for comment, however the company’s CEO Mary Ann Curran told the Star last September that her company is focused on improving quality and expanding in Ontario where there is a need.

Over the winter, Indira Naidoo-Harris, the minister responsible for early learning and child care, met more than 2,000 parents, child-care operators, advocates and experts and received about 6,000 submissions on how best to build an accessible, affordable and high quality system for families.

“Everywhere I went, two issues kept coming up as the top priority: affordability and access to licensed spaces,” she said in a statement. But in many parts of the province, particularly in rural and northern communities, for-profit care is the only option, she said.

“With this private members’ bill, MPP Fife is putting ideology ahead of access and affordability for Ontario families,” Naidoo-Harris said.

But Carolyn Ferns of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care said if the province is truly committed to quality and choice for parents, it should create non-profit options in areas where they are scarce.

“To build a real child-care system, Ontario needs to move away from the current market-driven approach and start planning,” she said.

Limiting for-profit care is one of three “big ideas” that will bring transformative change to the current patchwork of services available to families, Ferns said. Affordable parent fees and supporting the child-care workforce are the other two.

Although Fife acknowledges it is rare for a private member’s bill to become law, she said she hopes to “make a compelling case that the minister cannot ignore.”

“For us, this really is a turning point,” she said. “And it would also signal to the large, big box child-care operators that Ontario is serious about investing in quality care, not just any care.”