Liberals target child-care waitlists

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This article was published 31/08/2023 (926 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The dream of $10-a-day child care would finally be realized by a Manitoba Liberal government if elected by improving wages for workers and boosting infrastructure funding for centres to expand or retrofit and more, the party announced on Wednesday.

Despite a partnership between the federal and provincial governments launched in 2021 to create 23,000 affordable child-care spaces in Manitoba, Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said that a shortage of both workers and spaces has meant many parents are stuck on a waitlist for the $10-a-day subsidized spaces.

“What the (Progressive Conservatives) have come up with is not $10-a-day daycare,” Lamont said during a media conference outside a YMCA branch in Winnipeg.

“It’s $10-a-day daycare with a big fat asterisk, where you have to read the fine print to find out why you can’t actually get $10-a-day daycare.”

Lamont also levelled some of the blame at the NDP government that preceded the current government, saying they ran “one of the most costly and least used” early childhood education systems in the country.

When the NDP left government, Lamont said there was a waitlist of 13,000 to 16,000 people. He added that according to figures from the Manitoba Child Care Association, there are now 1,000 fewer early childhood educators than there were five years ago, after the Tories took power.

To attract and retain workers in the child-care system, Lamont said a Liberal government would adopt the MCCA’s proposed wage and benefits structure for workers in the sector.

Earlier this month, the provincial government put out a request for proposals looking for a consultant to develop a new wage framework for licensed child-care facilities.

Jodie Kehl, the MCCA’s executive director, told the Sun at the time that it seemed like an unnecessary endeavour, since her organization has been preparing wage guidelines for the last 17 years.

Under the current system, non-profit child-care centres are eligible to receive provincial funding for up to 60 per cent of costs for infrastructure projects.

That includes the expansion currently ongoing at the Brandon YMCA’s child-care centre, which has received a total of $1.2 million in funding from the previous government.

Under a Liberal government, Lamont said 100 per cent of costs for non-profits would be covered with a focus put on purchasing and retrofitting old buildings rather than creating new buildings.

Other items from the platform include introducing centres near where people are working, like near hospitals or schools; creating a single online portal for families across the province to register for spaces; and to expand training programming at the Université de Saint-Boniface to boost the number of French-speaking staff in the sector.

Speaking to the Sun by phone, Lamont said the cost of these initiatives for Manitoba would only be $20 to $25 million.

“Some of this is just that the funding is there from the federal government,” Lamont said. “But they’re (the province) refusing to hand it out.”

While the Tories have put in place a project in which municipalities can receive pre-made child care buildings that are built off-site and then installed where needed in exchange for land and a promise to help maintain the properties, Lamont said his plan would provide more bang for the buck by targeted previously existing buildings to be retrofitted for child care.

It would also allow for previously existing child-care centres to improve things like accessibility both for employees and children.

By co-locating spaces near workplaces like medical facilities, Lamont said that would also go toward addressing a problem some health-care workers have expressed, that they cannot work because they do not have child care for their family.

In a previous announcement, Lamont pledged to create a satellite campus of the University of Manitoba’s medical school in Brandon to train rural health-care professionals. That campus, he said, would include child-care spaces as part of the design.

“This really is urgent,” Lamont said. “It’s something that parents have been waiting for, for a very long time. As a parent, I had my kids on waiting lists for years. If you can’t find a space for your kid, you can’t work.”

By email, a spokesperson for the Progressive Conservative said the party will “continue fighting for affordable, accessible child care.”

“Our PC team was among the first in Canada to implement $10-a-day child care, and we are halfway to our 2026 goal of 23,000 spaces by 2026. We increased (early childhood educator) wages by 18 per cent over the past year,” they wrote.

In a statement, NDP families critic Nahanni Fontaine said she agreed that child care isn’t working under the Stefanson government.

“Parents need affordable, quality child care,” her statement read. “That’s why we announced our commitment ten days ago to bring in real $10/day child care for summer, holidays and PD days and build 23,000 with a focus on flexible hour spaces for shift workers like nurses. We’ve also committed to building a new Park Community Centre with a child-care facility so Brandon families can have affordable, quality child care close to home. Heather Stefanson’s MLA for Brandon East Len Isleifson couldn’t get this project done, but we will.”

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