REGINA - The issue of the Canada Child Care Agreement was front and centre at the Legislature as it returned this week.
On budget day Wednesday, several parents, directors and child care workers were on hand to demand the province sign on to the agreement to extend $10 a day childcare to 2031. Saskatchewan is one of only two provinces not yet signed on.
Joan Pratchler, MLA for Regina Rochdale and critic for Early Learning and Child Care, said it is “just too precarious now not to have this signed. These are uncertain times. Families need to know that they have child care so they can get to work.”
Pratchler said the consequences could be dire if the deal is not signed on. “Parents don't have certainty for child care, number one. Child care workers will be out of jobs, and centres will close. Rural, urban, northern, all over.”
Victor Roman Morrow, both a parent as well as a board chair, said the province needs to sign on now, even though the current agreement still has another year to run.
“There are actually centres that will be closing within months, before 12 months, if that agreement isn't signed, and not only that, if they don't address other urgent needs that they've been hearing from child care centres for about two years at least now,” said Roman Morrow.
“The real number of what could close within the next 12 months, if they don't put in a real funding model, is about 1,000 spaces. That represents over 3.5 per cent of their 28,000 daycare spot goal that they tout.”
He also pointed to their centres being chronically underfunded.
“The funding that centres like ours need, that we've been fighting for now for about a year and a half, equates the exact amount of funding that a new centre that would open their doors today would actually receive. What's happened is we're getting chronically underfunded. We're depleting our reserves. Some of those organizations are months away. Some are years away. All of us are seeing a path where we can't operate anymore because the provincial government, to be clear, they touted that they were the third province in 2021 to roll this out… They never implemented a funding model. Four years later, there is still not an equitable funding model that exists.”
A childcare operator in southern Saskatchewan, Cara Werner, also expressed her concerns.
“Yeah, I mean, going into Budget Day, we were nervous, and we came out, I think, a little bit more nervous because we still have no indication that they're going to sign, and no indication there were even a thought in the budget, so it's scary.”
Her biggest concern is “that parents in the province aren't going to have care that they need.
“They're not going to know where their children are going to go for care, and they're not going to have affordable care. So if we don't have affordable care, parents can't get out into the workforce, and that affects everybody. That affects the economy, it affects families, it affects everyone.”
She did not buy the explanations in the House from Minister of Education Everett Hindley on why the deal hasn't been signed yet.
“No, I don't, because I think that there's no reason at this point that it should be signed,” Werner said. “There's no reason not to sign on to a deal that guarantees the industry funding until 2031. There's no downside to that, but there is a downside to not signing, and it's uncertainty for families, and it's uncertainty for educators and everybody in the industry.”
During Question Period on Wednesday, Minister Hindley said his government was still prepared to negotiate for a deal.
“As the Premier has previously indicated, the province of Saskatchewan is prepared to negotiate and sign this agreement. That’s why we’re open to negotiating on an extension for this agreement. Keeping in mind that there is still a year left in this particular agreement, we look forward to continuing the conversations with our federal counterparts,” Hindley said.
“We want to make sure that this is a program and an extension that works for Saskatchewan families, that works for child care operators, that works for everyone in this province to make sure that we have a long-term, sustainable, affordable child care system for everyone across Saskatchewan. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.”
