Sask. child-care providers say they're scrambling to prepare after province rushed $10/day program rollout
CBC
Saskatchewan's Opposition NDP and several child care providers say the Saskatchewan Party government rushed a federal-provincial child-care agreement, and daycare workers are now scrambling to get their facilities ready.
The federal and provincial governments announced earlier this month that the goal of having regulated child care in the province cost an average of $10 a day for children under the age six will be achieved by April 1 — three years ahead of the original target of 2025-26, first set in August 2021.
The new pricing system applies to parents with kids under age six who are attending a licensed centre full time, but does not cover part-time, hourly and weekly child-care spaces.
Daycare workers said that as a result, providing those services will be difficult and expensive for them.
Part-time child care in Saskatchewan means nine days of child care per month. After those nine days, the child's family has to find another location for them.
But without a large supply of child-care centres, wait-lists can be years long.
The Opposition also said the accelerated $10 a day child-care rollout won't actually help parents get back to work.
During question period at the legislature Tuesday afternoon, Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck said child care providers were not consulted before the rollout was announced.
Now, child-care centres "may be forced to turn away families who rely on part-time spaces, and are looking at doing more with less," Beck said.
Premier Scott Moe blamed the lack of consultation on the federal government, but said the province is "able to continue to increase the number of spaces that we have been increasing for a number of years now," reaching nearly 23,000 spaces now.
Education Minister Dustin Duncan also criticized the federal government's role in the agreement.
"Because we're essentially running a child-care system and have a federal government that doesn't run child care insert[ing] themselves into this area … we're trying to reconfigure the plane while it's still in the air," he said.
"This has caused some challenges along the way."
But Beck maintained implementing the federal-provincial agreement three years ahead of schedule is ultimately bad for the economy.
P.E.I.'s Public Schools Branch is looking for 50 substitute bus drivers, and it'll be recruiting at three job fairs on Saturday, June 8. The job fairs are located at the Atlantic Superstore in Montague, Royalty Crossing in Charlottetown, and the bus parking lot of Three Oaks Senior High in Summerside. All three run from 9 a.m. until noon. Dave Gillis, the director of transportation and risk management for the Public Schools Branch, said the number of substitute drivers they're hiring isn't unusual. "We are always looking for more. Our drivers tend to have an older demographic," he said.