What to Ask a Daycare About Cleaning

The question Ontario tells you to ask

The Ministry of Education publishes Questions to ask a child care provider, translated into ten languages, and it is the list most parents in Ontario are pointed to. Under Health and safety, it says:

"How do you ensure the health of children? For example, what are your cleaning practices?"

That is the whole of it. Out of roughly fifty questions on the page, cleaning gets one clause. This is not a criticism of the list — it is a general-purpose list and it has a lot of ground to cover. But it does leave parents holding a question with no way to score the answer, which is a strange place to be left, because one of the stated purposes of Ontario's child care legislation is to help parents make informed choices.

The rest of this page is written by people who clean these buildings for a living. It is not a test to catch a centre out. Most of what follows is what a well-run centre is already doing, and the useful thing for a parent is simply being able to recognise it.

What a good answer sounds like

Rather than asking one big question, ask three small ones. They are quick, they are not confrontational, and together they tell you almost everything.

1. "How often are toys and high-touch surfaces done, and who does it?"

In a child care room, the surfaces that matter are not the floors. They are the things at knee height that go into mouths: toys, table tops, chair backs, door handles, light switches, taps, cot rails, the diaper change surface. A good answer separates them — toys that have been mouthed are taken out of circulation as they are used and washed before they go back, not at the end of the week; high-touch surfaces are done on a schedule through the day, not once at night.

The "who" matters as much as the "how often". In most centres, educators handle the in-room hygiene during the day and a cleaner does the building at night. That is a completely normal split. What you want to hear is that somebody owns each part of it, rather than each assuming the other does it.

2. "What product do you use, and does it carry a DIN?"

A Drug Identification Number is an eight-digit number Health Canada assigns to a disinfectant it has reviewed and authorised for sale in Canada. It is printed on the label. It is the difference between a product that has been assessed and a bottle with confident words on the front.

You do not need the centre to recite numbers at you. Asking whether they can show you the product list or the safety data sheets is enough, and a centre that has them will not mind at all. Treat "hospital-grade", "natural" or "eco-friendly" on their own as marketing rather than an answer — they are not registrations, and the useful follow-up is simply "does it have a DIN?"

There is a second half to this that matters more in a room full of small children: the product also has to be appropriate for the surface and the age group, applied when children are not in the immediate area, and rinsed where the label says to rinse. A centre that has thought about this will mention it before you do.

3. "Is it written down?"

This is the quietest question and the most revealing. A centre that keeps a cleaning record — even a simple signed sheet on a clipboard — is a centre where somebody is checking. A centre with no record anywhere is relying on memory, and memory is the first thing to go on a short-staffed Friday.

You are not entitled to inspect their paperwork and you should not expect to be handed a file. But "yes, we keep a log" is a materially different answer from a pause.

The two things almost nobody asks about

These are the two that separate cleaning that works from cleaning that looks like it worked. Neither costs money. Both are routinely missed.

Clean first, then disinfect

Disinfectants are inactivated by organic matter. Spraying disinfectant onto a table with lunch still on it wastes the product and leaves the table contaminated. The sequence is always two steps: clean with detergent to physically lift the soil off, then disinfect the now-clean surface. One step done twice as hard is not a substitute for two steps.

Contact time

Every disinfectant label states a contact time — the number of minutes the surface has to stay visibly wet for the product to do what it claims. It is often several minutes. If a surface is sprayed and immediately wiped dry, the product has not worked, no matter how good it is or how much it cost.

This is the single most common gap in every setting we work in, not just child care, and it is worth understanding as a parent because it explains something counter-intuitive: a room can smell clean, look clean, and still not be disinfected. Smell is not evidence. A strong chemical smell is arguably the opposite — heavy fragrance is often covering something rather than removing it.

What you can look up before you visit

Ontario publishes more about licensed child care than most parents realise, and all of it is free.

• The Licensed Child Care Website. The province runs a public search where you can look up licensed centres and see a provider's record. The Ministry's own guidance to parents is to search this list before you shortlist.
• The child care violations registry. Providers issued a compliance order, an administrative penalty, a protection order or a restraining order are listed in a registry that can be searched by the public. A clean result here is the norm, not an achievement — but it takes two minutes.
• The licence itself. A licensed centre has a licence, and there is nothing awkward about asking to see it. If a provider is not licensed, Ontario requires them to tell parents so in writing, in those words: "This child care program is not licensed by the Government of Ontario."

One thing to hold in mind while you look: a centre that has had a finding against it at some point is not automatically a worse centre than one that has not. What it did afterwards matters more, and that is a conversation to have with them rather than a verdict to reach on a website.

What the law actually requires

It is worth being precise here, because a lot of marketing in this industry is not.

Licensed child care in Ontario operates under the Child Care and Early Years Act, 2014 and its regulations, administered by the Ministry of Education. A licence is required to care for more than five children under thirteen. The rules the Ministry enforces cover health and safety, adult supervision, staffing and staff-to-child ratios, programming, buildings, equipment and materials, records management and nutrition. The Ministry inspects licensed and unlicensed child care and investigates complaints under the Act.

Other requirements parents often want to know about, all verified against the Ministry's published rules:

• Vulnerable sector checks. All staff, volunteers and students at a licensed centre must have a criminal reference check including vulnerable sector screening, renewed every five years, with offence declarations in the intervening years.
• First aid. Supervisors and employees counted in the ratio must hold valid standard first aid including infant and child CPR, and at least one certified employee must always be on site and close enough to respond.
• Immunisation. Immunisations are mandatory for children, staff, providers and others present in licensed programs, subject to medical exemption or a statement of conscience or religious belief.
• Ratios. Minimum staff-to-child ratios are set in regulation — for example one to three for infants under eighteen months, one to five for toddlers, and one to eight for preschool.
• Incidents. If anything happens that could affect your child's health, safety or well-being, the centre must notify you, complete a report, and give you a copy.

What there is not is a single numbered cleaning standard with a frequency table attached. Cleaning sits inside the health and safety and the buildings, equipment and materials requirements, and day-to-day sanitary practice is guided by the local public health unit. That is also who to contact about it: the Ministry directs illness reporting and sanitary practice concerns to your local unit — in the GTA, Toronto Public Health, Peel, York Region, Durham or Halton.

What to notice on the tour

You will be walking through at a busy moment with a child on your hip. You are not going to run an audit, and you should not try. A few things are simply visible:

• The diaper change area. Is the surface itself intact and wipeable, with no cracks or torn vinyl? Is there a sink within reach of it? Cracked surfaces cannot be disinfected, whatever is sprayed on them.
• Somewhere for mouthed toys to go. A bin, a bucket, a labelled tray — some physical place a toy goes when a child has had it in their mouth. If there is nowhere for it to go, it goes back on the shelf.
• Cloths and their colours. Many good centres colour-code cloths so the one used in the washroom never appears on a lunch table. If you see it, it is a genuinely encouraging sign, and worth a compliment rather than a question.
• Sleep mats and cots. Stored so they are not touching each other and each child's bedding stays with their own mat.
• Smell. Not fragrance — the absence of a sour note near bins, change areas and drains. Heavy air freshener is worth one gentle question.

And one that is not about cleaning at all but tells you the most: watch how the room responds to a mess. A dropped snack, a spill, an accident. In a well-run room somebody deals with it calmly and immediately and the day carries on. That reflex is worth more than any policy document.

Licensed child care in the GTA, by the numbers

For context on the size and shape of the sector you are choosing from. These figures are counted from Ontario's own open-data register of licensed child care facilities, snapshot dated 31 July 2026, filtered to active licences in the five GTA service-system-manager areas.

There are 6,286 active licensed child care facilities in Ontario — 6,115 child care centres and 171 home child care agencies. Of those, 2,976 are in the Greater Toronto Area:

City as recorded on the licence. Toronto's former municipalities are recorded inconsistently, so Scarborough, North York and Etobicoke appear both under their own names and within Toronto.

By region: City of Toronto 1,117 · York Region 612 · Peel 599 · Durham 327 · Halton 321.

One structural fact that surprises most parents: a large share of GTA child care is not independent. Sixty-four licensees operate five or more sites each, and between them they run 1,410 of the 2,976 centres — a little under half. The largest are the YMCA of Greater Toronto and PLASP Child Care Services, each with well over two hundred GTA sites, followed by Family Day Care Services and a number of municipal and non-profit operators.

This is worth knowing when you tour two centres and they feel oddly similar, or oddly different. A multi-site operator runs a written policy across every location, which tends to mean consistency and a real chain of accountability. A single independent centre is more variable in both directions — the best and the weakest are both more likely to be independents. Neither model is better. But if you are comparing a chain site with an independent, you are comparing two different things, and the questions above are how you tell.

What none of this means

It would be easy to read a page like this and go into a tour looking for faults. That is the wrong use of it, and it would give you a worse decision rather than a better one.

Almost every licensed centre in this province is run by people who care a great deal and are working hard inside real constraints — staffing, budgets, a building they may not own. A supervisor who cannot tell you a contact time from memory is not running a dirty room. Not knowing an answer is not the same as not doing the thing.

What you are really listening for is whether hygiene is a system or a vibe. A system has a schedule, a named owner, a product chosen on purpose and something written down. A vibe has good intentions and a busy Friday. The difference shows up in the answers long before it shows up in the room.

And if a centre answers all of this easily and in detail — say so. They have earned it, and almost nobody ever tells them.

Frequently asked questions

What should I ask a daycare about cleaning?

Ontario's Ministry of Education suggests asking "how do you ensure the health of children? For example, what are your cleaning practices?" A useful follow-up is to ask three smaller questions instead: how often are toys and high-touch surfaces cleaned and who does it, what product is used and does it carry a Health Canada DIN, and is there a written record you keep. A well-run centre answers all three without hesitation because the answers are part of how the room already runs.

Is there a legal cleaning standard for daycares in Ontario?

There is no single numbered cleaning standard. Licensed child care in Ontario operates under the Child Care and Early Years Act, 2014 and its regulations, administered by the Ministry of Education, which set requirements covering health and safety, buildings, equipment and materials, and records management. Day-to-day sanitary practice is also guided by the local public health unit. The duty sits with the licensee — the centre — not with any cleaning contractor it hires.

Can I look up a daycare's record before I visit?

Yes, and most parents do not know this. Ontario runs a public Licensed Child Care Website where you can search licensed centres and see a provider's record. The province also publishes a searchable child care violations registry listing providers issued a compliance order, an administrative penalty, a protection order or a restraining order. Both are free and open to anyone.

What does contact time mean and why does it matter?

Contact time, sometimes called wet time or dwell time, is the number of minutes a disinfectant has to stay visibly wet on a surface to actually work. It is printed on the product label. If a surface is sprayed and wiped dry in ten seconds, the product did not do what the label says it does. This is the single most common gap between a centre that looks clean and a centre that is disinfected, and it costs nothing to fix.

Why does a daycare need to clean before disinfecting?

Disinfectants are inactivated by organic matter. Applying one to a surface with food, saliva or soil still on it wastes the product and leaves the surface contaminated. The sequence is clean first with detergent to physically remove the soil, then disinfect the cleaned surface and leave it wet for the labelled contact time. Two steps, always in that order.

What is a DIN and should I ask about it?

A Drug Identification Number is an eight-digit number Health Canada assigns to a disinfectant it has reviewed and authorised for sale in Canada. It appears on the label. Asking whether the products carry a DIN is a fair, easy question, and a centre should be able to show you the product list or the safety data sheets. Be a little wary of a product described only as hospital-grade or natural with no number attached — those are marketing words, not a registration.

Who do I contact if I have a concern about cleanliness at a daycare?

Speak to the centre first — every licensed program must have a policy on parent issues and concerns, and you can ask to see it. If that does not resolve it, the Ministry of Education directs illness reporting and sanitary practice concerns to your local public health unit, which in the GTA means Toronto Public Health, Peel, York Region, Durham or Halton. Concerns about the licensing rules themselves go to the Ministry of Education, which inspects licensed and unlicensed child care and investigates complaints under the Act.

Should I worry if a daycare cannot answer my cleaning questions right away?

No. A supervisor showing you around at pick-up time is not a walking product catalogue, and not knowing a DIN off the top of their head means nothing. What matters is whether they can find out. "I do not have that in my head, but I will email you the product list" is a good answer. The answer worth noticing is the one that avoids the question, treats it as an odd thing to ask, or cannot point to any record at all.

References & further reading

Everything factual on this page was checked against the primary source in August 2026. Where a figure is counted rather than quoted, the dataset is named.

• Ontario, Ministry of Education. Questions to ask a child care provider. ontario.ca — the source of the cleaning question quoted above, also published as a PDF in ten languages.
• Ontario, Ministry of Education. Find and pay for child care and Rules for child care. ontario.ca — ratios, vulnerable sector checks, first aid, immunisation, incident reporting, unlicensed-provider disclosure.
• Ontario, Ministry of Education. Information for child care providers. ontario.ca — licensing, the child care centre licensing manual, and the child care violations registry.
• Ontario, Ministry of Education. Make a child care complaint. ontario.ca — the routing of illness reporting and sanitary practice concerns to the local public health unit.
• Child Care and Early Years Act, 2014, S.O. 2014, c. 11, Sched. 1, and O. Reg. 137/15.
• Ontario. Licensed Child Care Facilities in Ontario (open data), snapshot 31 July 2026 — the source of every count in the table above.
• Ontario. Licensed Child Care Website — the public search for licensed providers.
• Health Canada. Hard-surface disinfectants — Drug Identification Number (DIN).
• Public Health Ontario / PIDAC. Best Practices for Environmental Cleaning — the clean-then-disinfect sequence and contact time.

Note: this is general information for parents, not legal advice, and rules change. Counts are a point-in-time snapshot of a register that is updated monthly. Confirm anything you intend to rely on against the current primary source.

We wrote this because we clean these buildings and the question kept coming up from the wrong side of the counter. If you run a centre rather than choose one, the operator's version of all this is our guide to CCEYA cleaning requirements, the free printable daycare cleaning checklist template and the daycare cleaning and sanitizing log — all free, no strings. We also provide daycare cleaning across the GTA, and you are welcome to use everything here without ever speaking to us.