Capacity key for working daycare system By: Editorial Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Thursday, Apr. 27, 2023

Opinion

On April 2, parents in Manitoba received a boon: daycare at $10 per day.

It’s great news if you have a child in daycare. Licensed care, of the sort that can put parents at ease while they head to work for the day, hasn’t come cheaply for Manitobans.

The province is quite proud of instituting the new, cheaper rate — advertisements touting the new rate, the result of joint federal-provincial funding, are easy to find — but if parents don’t already have a spot for their children, or much hope for one, the rate doesn’t matter much at all.

According to the Manitoba Child Care Association (MCCA), there were 16,605 children on the province’s online child-care registry list as of June 2018. Of those kids, 12,838 needed a spot within three months. Since then, the province has replaced the online registry with a new search tool for parents to find care.

The competition is steep. StatCan’s census data for 2021 reported approximately 166,000 children in the province between the ages of zero and nine years old. (The total number of children under 12 needing care is larger but difficult to determine as StatCan separates its data in a way that groups children 10-14 years old together.)

And yet, according to the province’s search tool, there are only 1,164 licensed child-care facilities in the province (647 daycare centres, 107 nurseries, and 408 home operations). As of April 25, only 386 showed vacancies.

The province’s plan includes the creation of 23,000 new full-time spaces by the end of the 2025-26 fiscal year. Such growth in such a short time feels like playing catch-up, and the possibility of delays in funding, planning and construction mean it’s possible parents will still wind up waiting a long time for these much-needed, much-coveted spaces.

Prospective parents are often told in Manitoba that the best chance of obtaining a child-care spot is to apply for it before the child even makes its grand entrance to the world. And there’s no need to take that anecdotally: the MCCA itself advises such tactics.

Prospective parents are often told in Manitoba that the best chance of obtaining a child-care spot is to apply for it before the child even makes its grand entrance to the world. And there’s no need to take that anecdotally: the MCCA itself advises such tactics.

Economically, it is difficult for a young family to make ends meet on one income unless that income happens to be remarkably generous. StatCan reports that in 2014, 69 per cent of partner families were dual-income, compared to only 36 per cent in 1976.

When child care is in short supply, parents are forced to make difficult decisions about work, and how much of it can realistically be done without compromising the safety and care of their children.

This issue disproportionately affects women, who are often the ones choosing to stay home when no other options are available. If and when it ever does become possible to return to the workplace, their time away has a deleterious effect on their future career prospects — a phenomenon known as having their careers “mommy-tracked.”

Manitoba is in dire need of more than a few things, but among them are these: trained and well-compensated early childhood educators (a long underpaid field), and places for them to work.

Manitoba is in dire need of more than a few things, but among them are these: trained and well-compensated early childhood educators (a long underpaid field), and places for them to work.

It didn’t have to be this way. Years of austerity made this — operating grants for child-care centres were frozen for years, limiting expansion, training and availability, discouraging both the workers in the field itself and those who might have the children the sector exists to serve.

It’s time for the province to commit the resources required to expedite this process.

Then, if necessary, all parents can go to work in the knowledge their children are in good hands.