Developing child care for Brandon: Competing visions

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This article was published 05/02/2025 (401 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As families in Brandon stare down the reality of living a “child care desert,” they can take heart that some good, as well as some troubling, change is on the horizon.

Brandon is not unique in being a child care desert: overall in Manitoba, there is a licensed child space for just one in five children aged 0-12 years. But spaces are in particularly short supply in the Wheat City, where about 6,700 children under the age of nine are vying for one of just 1,000 child care spaces.

Space shortages are real and are causing real problems. The Brandon YMCA, which operates six child care learning centres, has closed all of its waiting lists due to “overwhelming demand.” Prairie Mountain Health reports that lack of child care is now a barrier to recruiting physicians and other medical staff, as well as causing retention challenges. The health authority is so concerned about child care shortages that it is preparing to open its own centre, on land it has purchased for that purpose.

Happily, there is child care development support at hand. Through a federal grant, staff from Prairie-based Co-operatives First are available to help start up not-for-profit child care co-operatives. The co-operative development group has had considerable success in Saskatchewan, where they are working shoulder-to-shoulder to help bring child care to Maple Creek, Muenster, Quill Lake, and other rural communities and small towns.

The model is innovative: it brings together community stakeholders and institutions to create a stable governance board that stewards the child care facility. This model marks a shift from an older style of parent-run co-operative daycare which asked busy mums and dads to own, operate and manage all aspects of the centre during the most time-crunched years of their lives. The new model instead leverages community expertise and stability, helping to bring badly needed child care services to where they haven’t existed before. Child care becomes a community asset, preserving public investments and ensuring longevity.

Co-operatives First is working actively with keen leaders in Morden, Souris and Carberry who want to develop child care services. Working together, Co-operatives First begins by shepherding a group through the complex process of applying for funding. Building a new facility or renovating existing space to be suitable for quality child care means meeting specific health and safety regulations. The capital cost for a new medium-sized child care centre can easily be between $3 million and $4 million. Groups can apply to the provincial Department of Early Learning and Child Care for a grant worth up to 60 per cent of the capital cost, but are required to make up the remainder. This can leave a community on its own to raise upward of a million dollars or more. Co-operatives First provides coaching to help communities work through financing, legal incorporation, navigate design and construction, and then support the hiring of administrative staff and early childhood educators as the doors open to welcome children and families.

The team at Co-operatives First offers free “boot camps” to demystify the Manitoba licensing process. When a community is ready to move forward, Co-operatives First will offer practical, hands-on support at zero charge. Not a penny changes hands for the bespoke assistance, thanks to 28 months of funding from PrairiesCan. In November, more than a dozen Brandonites attended boot camp, lending reason to hope there will soon be co-operative expansion in the city.

The co-operative community-based approach stands in stark contrast to a different and more troubling development option. Recent media reports have announced an Alberta-based organization, Connecting the Dots Foundation, is probing the Brandon child care market. According to media coverage, CT plans to build a 150-space centre in WestVic, with a special focus on children with additional support needs.

Navroop Ghumman, an executive from Connecting the Dots, says the proposed Brandon child care facility will be a not-for-profit operation, and hence eligible for provincial funding to offer $10/day child care. But the business is very far from community-based, as even a quick review of its website reveals.

Connecting the Dots is oriented to what it calls “owner-operators” who buy into a “turnkey operation.” Franchisees pay a hefty price for business intelligence: after signing a non-disclosure agreement, individual privately owned and operated franchise centres are guided by Alberta headquarters. The website assures potential franchisees of “instant access to a proven and highly profitable business model.”

The Connecting the Dots website advertises investment opportunities on its home page, asking the provocative question: why should you invest in child care and early learning instead of other industries? Their answer? Child care is “virtually recession-proof,” making it “one of the most rewarding businesses to own and operate,” especially since the sector is “experiencing strong business growth.” Child care and the early learning industry is, the website claims, “highly attractive for investment.”

There are practical reasons to prioritize not-for-profit child care. In a labour-intensive service, profit-making means squeezing early childhood education staff. Decades of cross-national research evidence conclusively shows that quality of care is enhanced when a profit motive is absent — this is true for early learning, as it is for all the human social services, including elder care.

A large share of a non-profit Manitoba child care centre’s operating budget comes from taxpayer-funded operating grants. These taxpayer dollars are best used when spent directly on services to children and families, rather being extracted for private profits.

Often a carefully managed child care facility will own its own building, and it would be scandalous if an asset largely purchased with public dollars were to be taken out of public circulation to create private gain for an owner.

Finally, in Manitoba, only non-profit child care services receive sufficient funding for them to offer $10/day child care to parents. This is a longstanding strength of Manitoba’s child care policy architecture, designed to conserve public spending for public good. Exactly how the Connecting the Dots model, which seems corporate and profit-focused in everything but name, will meet Manitoba’s prudent requirements for non-profit child care remains to be seen.

While entrepreneurs are eyeing business opportunities, meaningful support to build stable community-owned and managed child care is being offered by Co-operatives First. If I were a parent in Brandon, I know what I’d be choosing in a heartbeat.

» Susan Prentice is a professor of sociology at the University of Manitoba, where she is the Duff Roblin Professor of Government. A family policy specialist, she is a member of the Co-operatives First Child Care Advisory Group.