The Liam Riazati Memorial Fund: Free Concrete Barriers, Not Bollards — A Child Care Operator's Guide
If you run a licensed child care centre in Ontario, the Liam Riazati Memorial Fund will pay a pre-approved vendor to supply, deliver and install concrete barriers at your site at no cost to you, if your centre is eligible. It will not pay for steel bollards. Ontario states that only concrete barriers are eligible under the initiative, and it names other types of safety barrier — steel bollards, raised curbs and impact resistant planters — as not eligible for funding.
That one distinction decides everything else here. Below: what the fund covers, who is eligible and what it will not reimburse, how to obtain barriers through it, and what a centre is looking at if it separately decides it wants permanent steel bollards.
One disclosure first, because it should change how you read this page. We are Bollard Boys. We manufacture and install steel bollards — the product this fund excludes. We are not a pre-approved vendor under the programme and we cannot supply anything through it, so there is nothing in the fund sections below that we are able to sell you. They are here because the eligibility rule is the thing operators are being told wrong.
What the Liam Riazati Memorial Fund Is and What It Pays For
The Liam Riazati Memorial Fund is a $20 million provincial fund. It is named for Liam Riazati, a child who died after a vehicle collision with a child care centre in September 2025.
It supports community-based licensed child care programs, many of which operate in retail units, places of worship, residential dwellings and standalone public buildings.
Vendors are now available to supply, deliver and install concrete barriers under the fund at no cost to eligible licensees. All three parts — supply, delivery and installation — are covered. The eligible product is concrete barriers.
Funding is available until March 31, 2027, or until all funding has been allocated, whichever comes first.
Who Is Eligible — and the One Exclusion That Catches Centres Out
The fund is for eligible licensees of community-based licensed child care programs in Ontario. Ontario’s own programme page is the authority on eligibility and is the only place to confirm your centre’s status. We do not administer any part of this fund and cannot tell you whether you qualify.
The exclusion worth knowing before you do anything: a licensee that has already installed physical safety barriers at its site is not eligible for reimbursement of expenses which have already been incurred. The fund pays vendors to carry out work. It does not pay you back for work already done and already paid for.
Ontario does not state how barrier work a centre has already paid for affects a funded installation. So if you think your centre may be eligible, read the programme page and ask the programme before you commission or pay for barriers yourself.
How to Get Barriers Through the Fund (Applications Are Open)
Applications are open now. The process Ontario sets out leaves the licensee in control of it:
- Use the standardized Request for Service template to request quotes.
- Obtain quotes from at least three vendors that are pre-approved under the fund.
- Select the most cost-effective option.
- Retain your documentation.
Because the quotes have to come from vendors already pre-approved under the fund, vendor selection is a choice among them rather than an open procurement. Ontario’s page for child care providers is the source for the programme’s details, including the template and the pre-approved vendors: ontario.ca/page/information-child-care-providers.
Funding is available until March 31, 2027, or until all funding has been allocated, whichever comes first.
What the Fund Does Not Cover
Ontario is explicit about the limit. In its words: “Only concrete barriers are eligible for funding through this initiative” (ontario.ca). The page then names the types of safety barrier that are not eligible for funding:
- steel bollards
- raised curbs
- impact resistant planters
So if your centre wants steel bollards, this fund is not the route, whoever installs them. There is no vendor and no version of the application that turns a bollard into a funded item.
Say that plainly, because the search results do not. Any page offering an Ontario child care centre free or grant-funded bollard installation is describing something this fund does not do — and until recently that included an earlier version of this page.
Concrete Barriers and Steel Bollards Are Two Different Purchases
The fund pays for concrete barriers. We make steel bollards. We are not going to grade one against the other, because we have no part in supplying the funded product and no test data on either.
What we would ask a funded vendor, if it were our centre: what exactly is being installed, how is it fixed to or into the ground, how much of the lot or sidewalk does it take up, can it be moved later, and has it been tested to a published standard? Put the questions in writing and keep the answers with your quotes. You are comparing three of them anyway.
And so you know what the paid alternative actually is: Bollard Boys fabricates steel bollards and sleeves, and our own crews set them in concrete footings. They are not crash-certified. Crash performance is a tested property. Ours have not been tested, we hold no certification, and we claim no rating, no impact speed and no standard for what we make. If your centre needs certified crash-rated protection, ask every supplier — us included — for the test report itself, and do not accept a description in place of one.
What to Do Next
In order:
- Read the programme page yourself. ontario.ca/page/information-child-care-providers. Eligibility and process come from there, not from a vendor — including not from us.
- Check the programme before you pay for barriers yourself. Expenses already incurred are not reimbursed, and Ontario does not say how work you have already paid for affects a funded installation.
- Request your quotes on the standardized Request for Service template, from at least three vendors pre-approved under the fund, then select the most cost-effective option and keep the documentation.
- Walk your site and write down where vehicles come closest to children. The parking aisle beside the play area, the drop-off lane, the frontage, the gate. This one is our opinion rather than a programme requirement, but it makes three quotes comparable.
- Treat anything the fund excludes as a separate decision. Steel bollards are a capital purchase by the centre, on the centre’s own timeline. Nothing about the fund obliges you to make it.
What Ontario Has Not Said — Including on This Page Before
Nothing on Ontario’s programme page states that bollards are mandatory for child care centres, that they are becoming mandatory, or that regulations requiring them are on the way. We re-checked on 26 September 2026. We have no other source for it either, so we are not going to imply it.
An earlier version of this page did imply that such a requirement was coming. We could not source that, so we took it out — even though it was the part of the page that sold.
If you are reading vendor pages while you work through this, that is the pattern to watch for. A supplier who tells you a purchase is about to be legally required, without naming the regulation, is selling you urgency rather than protection.
Where Bollard Boys Fits — and Where We Don't
Plainly, so there is no misunderstanding: we cannot get your centre money from this fund. We are not one of its pre-approved vendors. We cannot supply a funded barrier, we cannot make your centre eligible, and we cannot coordinate approvals on the province’s side. If free concrete barriers are what your centre needs, the process runs between you, the programme and its pre-approved vendors, and there is no role in it for us.
What we do: Bollard Boys GTA Inc. manufactures its own steel bollards and sleeves and installs them across Toronto and the GTA with our own crews, set in concrete footings, including work that requires municipal permits. That is paid for by the customer. If a centre decides — separately, and after the fund has done what it does — that it wants fixed steel protection at a gate, an entrance or the edge of a play area, that is the conversation we can have: a straightforward purchase, with no grant and no regulation behind it.
Bollard Boys GTA Inc., Toronto and the GTA. Call +1-647-540-4466, email bollardboysgta@gmail.com, or use our contact page. If the fund is the better answer for your site, we will tell you so and point you back to the programme.
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