The Star has started an interesting series looking into substandard daycares:
Get daycare data online promptly
Parents who are contemplating sending their child to any licensed daycare in Ontario should be able to find out easily whether it meets the minimum standards of safety and cleanliness. But a lengthy Star investigation, based on thousands of daycare incidents and inspection reports that had been kept secret for years, uncovered a wide range of serious problems about which parents had no way of learning.
It’s a good idea to put the relevant data online — if the assessed value of my house is online, if restaurant inspection reports (now there’s some good descriptions of filth) are online, so should daycare inspection reports be.
But there is an easy way to get at them now anyway if one has concerns: ask for them. Our old daycare, the fabulous University Settlement, passed the inspection reports around the parent advisory group meetings then posted them, IIRC, on a bulletin board in the hallway where any parent could read them. That level of transparency is probably beyond the call of duty. But I would worry about a daycare that refused to show them to me at all.