Making Manitoba more affordable

St. James

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/06/2025 (398 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With the school year wrapping up and summer around the corner, June is a busy time for parents and caregivers. Our government has been working hard to make summer easier for families by ensuring child care is accessible and affordable year-round. In our budget, we extended $10-a-day child care to include non-school days, such as in-services, holidays, and of course summer break.

This change will cut the maximum fee for non-school days in half, saving families as much as $750 per child every year. By bringing in true $10-a-day child care year-round, our government is making Manitoba one of the most affordable places in Canada to raise a family.

Access to affordable child care requires more than just funding support. That’s why our government is moving quickly to open more child-care spaces, and to train more people for these important jobs.

Students in recognized early childhood education programs in Manitoba can claim up to $5,000 of tuition reimbursement. That incentive has supported more than 500 students training to work in early childhood education in our province.

Working with the federal government, we are creating child-care spaces in health-care facilities, schools and post-secondary campuses across the province. These spaces will make it easier for parents to train for, and work, where they’re needed most – in our health-care system, in the trades, and in education.

All together, we’ve opened more than 4,300 child care spaces for children ages zero to six, and we are doing the work to open even more new spaces in communities all over Manitoba.

These spaces can welcome kids because of the incredible work of early childhood education professionals. That’s why we just announced a historic wage increase for front-line early childhood educators, with increases up to $5 an hour for some roles.

Our government is working with our federal counterparts to make sure we keep the great early childhood educators we have, and attract more Manitobans to do this incredibly important work.

As your MLA for St. James, I’m always open to hearing from you. You can reach my office by emailing adrien.sala@yourmanitoba.ca, or at 204-792-8779.