Manitoba well short of spaces promised under national daycare program

Manitoba has created a fraction of the 23,000 spaces promised under the $10-a-day national child-care program announced in 2021.

Just 3,408 spaces have been created for infants and preschoolers since 2022, a new national study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found.

A $1.2-billion, five-year deal inked by the province and the federal government four years ago aimed to create an additional 23,000 regulated child-care spaces in Manitoba by the end of fiscal 2025-2026, with fees averaging $10 a day.

While the province has reported 4,300 spaces have been created for children under the age of seven, the economist behind the report says it has “a more restrictive definition of children not yet in full-time school,” that was used in counting Manitoba children under the age of six.

“On that basis, only 3,408 new licenses have been awarded to actual providers that we can track since 2022,” David Macdonald said in an email.

His report, titled Cash Cow: Assessing Child Care Space Creation, calls on governments to act quickly and create more spaces. It urges help for non-profit providers to expand so that public funding doesn’t end up enriching for-profit centres.

“Non-profit expansion is important, as it keeps the money spent directly on child-care costs,” said Molly McCracken, Manitoba director of the CCPA.

The two main expenses in child care are labour and rent, she said.

“If a profit is made, it is at the expense of either of these,” she said.

In Manitoba, nearly 95 per cent of child-care centres operate as non-profit.

“When new spaces are created in the non-profit sector, the public $10-a-day funding goes to better wages and higher-quality child care,” she said.

Provinces will soon submit plans to the federal government outlining how they will create new child-care spaces, McCracken said.

“They need to be pushed to step up and support the creation of new publicly owned centres, which can be done in partnership with Indigenous governments, regional health authorities, school divisions and existing non-profit providers to expand child care to get us back on track,” she said.

If the shortage of child-care spaces isn’t addressed, the integrity and success of the promised $10-a-day, Canada-wide system of early learning and child care will be “severely undermined,” McCracken said.

“Parents will continue to be unable to find needed, affordable child-care spaces. A lack of child care prevents labour-force participation of parents and stifles productivity.”

In May, the province and federal government announced a new wage grid for the local early learning and child-care sector with historic raises amounting to as much as $5 more per hour. McCracken said the new study didn’t examine the impact of Manitoba’s pay bump on addressing staffing shortages at child-care centres.

“The pay increase was a crucial step for labour-force recruitment and retention, as well as staffing newly created child-care spaces,” she said.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca