Since the start of Ottawa’s $10-a-day program, Sandra Christian has had many families leave her private child-care centre in B.C. for a spot in a subsidized centre.
But that’s not what worries her — child-care services are in high demand so empty spots get filled quickly.
What worries her and her office manager, Carley Babiarz, is some of these families have said the money they’ve saved on child care has helped them buy a second property.
“We don’t believe that that’s the intention of the [$10-a-day] program,” said Babiarz, who works at the Creative Kids Learning Centers, which has nine locations in Surrey, Langley and Chilliwack, B.C. “It doesn’t best suit our low-income… families.”
Many other child-care workers shared the same opinion at the first national conference for child-care operators, hosted by the Association of Alberta Childcare Entrepreneurs on Tuesday.
At the event, more than 250 attendees watched seven panelists from six provinces answer questions on how their child-care centres — and the families who use them — have fared under Ottawa’s $10-a-day program. The program aims to decrease the fees parents pay for child care to an average of $10-a-day by 2026.
Sitting on the waitlist
When Ottawa announced the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Plan in 2021, it said subsidized child care would help more families get back to work. But child-care providers said low-income families are often unable to access the program.
It is the families who already had access to child-care services who have been able to get the subsidized rates, after the centres their kids attended signed onto the program, says Krystal Churcher, who is chair of the association.
“I see that this could be really beneficial to low-income families,” said Churcher. “I don’t believe that those are the families that have access to these programs at this time.”
Nichole Kessel, owner of Wiggles & Giggles Childcare Centre in Whitewood, Sask. agrees. “It’s absolutely not working for low-income families to access it. It is the complete opposite.”
Due to lower revenue under the subsidized child-care system, many centres have had to cut back on staff and services, such as meal plans and educational activities.
Some families who see how the centres are struggling are pitching in. An upper-income mother at Kessel’s child-care centre buys supplies for the centre “because she feels like she’s not paying enough and she wants to add them to the quality of our child-care system.”
Meanwhile, low-income families are stuck on ever-growing waitlists, said Babiarz.
“The accessibility for low-income families is dependent on when you got on the waitlist,” she said.
Demand for spaces has grown in response to the more affordable rates, which means low-income families are facing a more competitive landscape.
“It’s much more affordable so I have a lot less spaces that I can hand out to people who actually need them,” said Kessel. “[There are] a lot of people that cannot get back to work just because there is no space.”
At the conference, child-care providers suggested advocating for provincial governments to permit subsidized child-care centres to increase the number of spaces for kids.
The Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care agreement between the federal government and many provinces governs the addition of new subsidized child-care spaces. These provinces must give permission for centres to expand to meet goals such as increased child-care spaces.
But child-care providers say new spaces are not opening in time.
“We’re not opening spaces fast enough to combat” the growing waitlist, said Babiarz.
Child-care providers said governments could also improve access for low-income families by introducing a sliding scale fee, where the percentage of the government’s subsidy is based on a family’s income.
“We need an income based [fee],” said Jacky Sheppard, owner of Streetsville Children’s Centre and Streetsville Academy in Mississauga, Ont. “We need to figure this out because there are people getting spots that really could afford to pay more and the people that can’t afford to pay it are not getting the spots.
“It’s upside down, it’s also all messed up.”
‘Numbers don’t align’
In Alberta, Ontario, B.C. and Nova Scotia, child-care operators say the parental fees they are permitted to charge plus government subsidies are not sufficient to cover costs, which have risen significantly in recent years.
Ontario child-care centres in the $10-a-day program have not been allowed to increase parents’ child-care fees or the subsidy rate since 2022. Those in Alberta have been allowed a nine per cent raise in fees — three per cent a year over three years — since 2021, while costs have risen by 15 per cent over that period.
“I don’t think I need to be an expert in math to let you guys know that those numbers don’t align. And when the money runs out, so does the quality,” said Churcher. “You’re gonna have to make choices as an operator as to what you’re going to cut back.”
To cover increasing costs, many child-care operators said they were putting their own money into their businesses.
Child-care operators discussed negotiating a new funding model that would better reflect the current cost of child care — or opting out altogether.
“There’s a lot of talk of opting out” of the $10-a-day program, said Sheppard.
Professional job
Many child-care owners also spoke about the difficulty of retaining early childhood education workers due to lower wages compared to other educational fields.
Chucher said many workers are using child-care centres as a “stepping stone” to gain experience and move onto work in schools, social work and trades.
She said there’s a need for early childhood education to be recognized as a professional job, “comparable to working as an education assistant in the school system [or] as a teacher.”
Churcher said the association has put forward ideas, both federally and provincially, around apprenticeship programs for prospective early childhood educators in high schools and colleges.
“I think the solution that we can offer is to look at what is going to make this an attractive workforce to enter,” said Churcher.
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