Bootstrapped daycare plan gets funded by government

A board of volunteers has crossed a “chasm” in Manitoba and bootstrapped an entire daycare project plan that officially received $2.1 million provincial and federal dollars to implement.

The Tiny Taters Childcare Co-operative, which was formed by Carberry community members such as parents and grandparents, announced last week that their comprehensive plan to build a 5,400-square-foot daycare has been backed by a government funding commitment. Krista Plaisier, chair of the board, said that the news was satisfying.

“When the email came in, I was in complete shock, actually,” Plaisier said in a recent interview. “You know what, it makes the process that we went through worth it.”

Plaisier said that subcommittee meetings were held every week for well over a year, while board meetings took place every month. She said the team has been resilient in dealing with hurdles.

According to an advisor who helped the volunteers apply for funding, the community group has had to fight battles at every phase of the application, navigating an “unreasonable” process. The advisor and the mayor of Carberry said the Manitoba government ought to make it easier to build daycares.

The volunteer process in Carberry included forming a board, surveying residents to prove the demand for daycare, creating a schematic of the proposed daycare building, designing a budget for the first three years of daycare operation, forecasting enrolment, making a staffing plan, arranging a mortgage, securing land, subdividing the land, submitting an application to the province and fundraising.

Plaisier said the board is finalizing a contract to build the daycare, which is expected to be constructed in Saskatchewan over the winter and transported to the Stickle Avenue site in 2027. Groundbreaking is planned for the spring.

The $2.1 million was confirmed this fall through the Canada-Manitoba Canada-Wide early Learning and Child Care Agreement. It will go toward the construction of the daycare.

The building is designed to serve as a 55-space facility with 10 additional spaces for nursery school, with a commercial kitchen, an office and more in a completely accessible building. It is planned to be operational before the end of 2027.

Plaisier said the board has shown resilience, and is not celebrating until the daycare crosses the finish line and opens.

According to the Manitoba government, the funding announced this month required project planning information, budgets, design information, evidence of need and proof of funding. Plaisier said she contributed her own time because of sentiment for community.

“I have been raised from a very early age that your community is what you make it,” Plaisier said. “I’ve never been one to sit on my hands and say, ‘Somebody should do this,’ right? If it’s something that benefits our community, then I think that it’s important for people to step up to take the role.”

Plaisier said that there is a large gap of daycare services in Carberry, and it made sense to get proactive to solve the problem.

“I don’t think that we’re at a place that we can just sit back and say, ‘Well, the province needs to do this for us.’ I think that we can kind of take the bull by the horns and and run with it.”

The board has leaped over a “chasm that is too great for volunteers to cross” in Manitoba, according to Cathy Edwards, who works out of the not-for-profit Co-Operatives First, which advised the Carberry board how to qualify for funding. She said that a great deal of resistance was created by the Manitoba government. 

“We literally had to knock down barriers at every step of the way, and the only barriers that were put up were by the province,” Edwards said.

Edwards said that it is unrealistic to expect volunteers to complete the work that was, in fact, completed in Carberry.

“It’s far more than being able to be a board of a childcare centre. It’s project management. It’s legally figuring out architectural drawings overlaid with regulations. There’s just a number of complicated, significant steps that have to be navigated in order to access that funding.”

The program was designed to expand existing daycares, not start new ones from scratch, she said. But due to the lack of daycare in the province, groups are now trying to go through the process to create new daycares for their communities and are dealing with comprehensive needs that cannot be expected to be navigated by volunteers, she said.

The process spanned “hundreds of hours of Zoom calls” of consultation between the Carberry volunteer board and the non-profit, Edwards said. The advisory service is provided for free.

Edwards said the Manitoba government ought to partner with Co-Operatives First to provide funding for its service, or consider policy changes that make it easier to navigate the program.

“It is incumbent on the provincial government to put guardrails in place to ensure that funding is used properly,” she said. “That being said, when you are considering the magnitude of a project like this and expecting a volunteer board to basically pick up the baton and figure it out is, I think, an ask that is overreaching.”

She noted that the auditor general of Manitoba reported in early 2026 that the province “lacks sufficient planning to meet its commitments” under the childcare program, the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement.

The province had commited to creating 23,000 additional spaces by the end of March, but according to the auditor there was “a lack of sufficient data on demand, waitlists, and space closures,” making it difficult to gauge whether access to daycare had been improving, or to identify where childcare is most needed. The auditor projected that Manitoba would fail on its goal. The agreement was extended to 2030-2031.

Co-Operatives First is currently assisting nine groups in Manitoba to navigate program requirements to start daycare in their communities, Edwards said. The closest other project is in Riverdale.

Carberry Mayor Ray Muirhead said it was “amazing” to see the commitment of volunteers to mobilize such a large project.

“They deserve a great big pat on the back and a lot of credit, because they made this happen; $2.1 million is a major announcement, and for a volunteer committee to go through this, to get to this point, is amazing,” Muirhead said in a recent interview. “

It can be cumbersome and frustrating when trying to advance projects at the municipal level, he said. Bootstrapping might be the way forward for more community needs, he said.

“If we sit and wait for a lot of these things nowadays — this is the dynamic that goes on with municipal politics — if we sit and wait, we’ll be waiting a long time. Communities and municipalities have to step up. This is where we’re at right now. We have to step up and do this ourselves.”

Muirhead said he believes the Manitoba government should provide the type of service that was provided by Co-Operatives First to assist the daycare project.

“I think there should be a project manager. If a committee from Carberry wants to build a daycare which is needed, then there should be somebody in the government that helps: ‘Here’s what you need to do. Here’s a template. Here’s a daycare we built … Here’s some references and resources.’”

Plaisier said that Co-Operatives First was key to the project.

“We cannot say enough about them. I don’t know that we would have even got to a stage yet of even putting our application in if we didn’t have them working with us,” Plaisier said. “The smartest move, if we’ve done anything right through this whole thing, it was partnering with them.”

The Town of Carberry has supported the initiative by partnering with the RM of of North Cypress-Langford to sell land to the daycare for $1 and is planning to supply infrastructure — such as sewers, and fire and water lines — to the daycare site, Muirhead said. The municipalities will also forgive property taxes on the daycare for 25 years.

The daycare is planned to be funded by parent fees and a Manitoba government operating fund once it opens.

The board is hoping to fundraise between $300,000 and $500,000 more from the community before the end of 2027 to lower the mortgage on the building and get ahead of the cost to run the daycare once it opens, Plaisier said. An executive director, early childhood educators and childcare assistants will need to be hired. The board will be in charge of operating the daycare.

» cmcdowell@brandonsun.com