CBC News, November 4, 2024
Excerpt: "For Canadian families who've seen their child care fees halved or plummet to $10 a day in the past few years, Canada's affordable child care plan has undoubtedly been a game-changer.
After committing to build a Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) system in its 2021 budget, the federal government followed up by signing agreements with each province and territory over the next year.
It pledged to invest up to $30 billion over five years and $9.2 billion annually thereafter, with the goal of bringing fees down to an average of $10 a day by 2026 and expanding the number of child-care spaces — 250,000 new spots across the country by March 2026.
Yet the journey to build an affordable, high-quality, inclusive and flexible child-care system hasn't been without speed bumps. New parents eager for a spot are still meeting long wait lists, and beleaguered operators are struggling to turn expectations into reality.
Now, with pressure on to make it to 250,000 new spots in the next year and a half, daycare experts share what's standing in the way.
Retaining and recruiting staff
Since the CWELCC agreements emerged in 2021 and 2022, Canada has improved daycare affordability by shouldering some of the burden of child-care costs. Families with kids under age six paid lower fees for registered daycare programs and provinces largely used the federal funds to cover the lost revenue for operators, according to Carolyn Ferns, public policy coordinator for the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care.
Despite perennial staff shortages, the need to retain and recruit more daycare workers hasn't received the same attention.
"Overall, there's still a lack of decent working pay for many early childhood educators (ECEs) and childcare workers," Ferns said in Toronto."
