NDP pledges to expand $10-a-day child care

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This article was published 21/08/2023 (935 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba NDP announced on Sunday that they intend to expand the province’s $10-a-day child care to include holidays, summer months and even professional development school days.

NDP leader Wab Kinew said that when the Progressive Conservative government introduced this program back in April, it was not “true” $10-a-day child care since they failed to consider these outliers that uniquely impact parents who don’t work a regular 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job or get holidays off.

“Perhaps you’re the nurse who does shift work, or you work construction. You may be working on the weekends or around the clock. Or perhaps you just struggle to get out of the office on time because of the busy demands of your work schedule,” he said during a press conference at Winnipeg’s Paufeld Park.

“If you need flexible childcare, many Manitobans just can’t find it. You have to rely on a patchwork schedule. It’s time that we change that.”

Kinew estimates that this expansion to the $10-a-day program would cost around $10 million annually.

The current program, funded by the federal and provincial government, offers $10-a-day child-care at licensed facilities for infant, nursery and preschool programs.

School-aged children are also eligible for $10-a-day care before school, during lunch or after school.

However, school-aged kids are not currently eligible for $10-a-day care during the summer months, holidays or days off, which can currently cost parents $18 to just over $20 per day.

To Kinew, this discrepancy is tantamount to false advertising, since the PCs have been touting $10-a-day child-care on billboards and bus stop ads since its inception.

“Many families probably thought they were getting $10-a-day … over the months of July and August and then realized that they’re actually paying significantly more,” he said.

“So that’s a real problem we’ve been hearing from parents and today we’re announcing our commitment to solve this challenge that’s been created by [Premier] Heather Stefanson and the PCs.”

Following the NDP’s announcement, Families Minister Rochelle Squires released a statement drawing attention to the province’s achievements in the child-care sector during its tenure.

In 2021, the federal and provincial governments signed a five-year, $1.2-billion agreement to cut parent fees to $10 per day by 2026. The program started in Manitoba this April, three years ahead of schedule.

“Clearly the NDP aren’t ready for government,” Squires said in this statement. “Our PC team has already implemented the largest expansion of child care in Manitoba history, with 2,600 new school-age spaces including room for after school, in-service and summertime care. We are already halfway to our goal of 23,000 new spaces by 2026.”

Squires was not the only one who was critical of the NDP’s announcement.

Manitoba Child Care Association executive director Jodie Kehl told the Winnipeg Free Press that an expansion of the $10-a-day initiative doesn’t fix the major issues currently plaguing the child-care system, such as staff shortages and exploding wait lists.

“If I’m having enough challenges staffing my program Monday to Friday, the thought of now opening on the weekends and trying to attract early childhood educators to work — what’s the motivation to do that, right?” she said.

During Sunday’s announcement, Kinew acknowledged that expanding the $10-a-day program isn’t a catch-all solution to the challenges facing the Manitoba child-care system.

If his party is allowed to form government this fall, Kinew pledges to work more closely with child-care workers to try and fill these gaps.

“We have adopted a fiscal framework in terms of what we’re committing to in this election campaign, that will see us be able to deliver 23,000 new child-care spaces in Manitoba in the coming years,” he said.

“The difference between the PCs who talk about it and the Manitoba NDP is that we’re the party of builders, so we will build the spaces that are needed across this province and not just talk about it.”

The upcoming provincial election is scheduled to take place on Oct. 3.

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com, with files from the Winnipeg Free Press