Local parents applaud child care deal between federal government and province

“It’s a great announcement,” said Tracey Studer, who has two kids at Mother Nature’s Preschool in Medicine Hat. “We pay a lot in child care and just having extra money to put towards our kids’ savings for school or extracurricular activities is never a bad thing.”

Rachel Sabourin has one child at Mother Nature’s, and another will start there next month.

Her daughter began attending around the time the former NDP government’s $25-a-day program started in 2017. The preschool was part of the NDP’s pilot program, which was cancelled by the United Conservatives this spring.

“So for full-time, we were paying $550 a month, and then it went up to $1,000 and then it did drop to $950 a little bit after that,” she said.

She is also excited to get her kids into more extracurricular activities like dance classes, sports and swimming lessons.

“All of those things costs a lot of money and when you’re paying half your salary to child care it really makes it hard to do all those extra things with your kids.”

Studer says the financial savings also take away a difficult choice for all mothers.

She says when people are looking at starting a family and the number of kids they want to have, the cost of child care plays a huge role in that.

“It almost becomes unaffordable to have a certain amount of kids and maintain a career,” she said. “If you’re paying more in child care costs than you are making in a wage, and so as a woman you have to make a choice – the size of your family or if you have a family, or if you work or if you take a pause.”

Sabourin said more child care spaces will have benefits beyond a family’s pocketbook and career choices.

She said kids socializing with each other at a young age is very important. When preschools were shut down at the start of the pandemic her child couldn’t wait to get back.

“She was like ‘I want to to see my friends, I want to see my friends, I want to play’ and you know when the daycare opened up again she was so excited,” Sabourin said.

“So having a place that’s fun for kids that’s educational, that’s helping them socialize means more to me than even the cost savings.”

Studer and Sabourin were thankful for Mother Nature’s co-owner and director Jennifer Paul advocated and fought for the province to make the $3.8-billion deal with the federal government.

Paul said it’s been a long time coming.

“This announcement is such a huge step forward for women, for families for the economy, for our children and it’s just amazing to see it finally come to fruition. It’s something that’s been advocated for for over 30 years.”

Paul expressed relief following the announcement. She said when the pilot program was cancelled they lost 50 per cent of their enrolment due to affordability concerns of our families and she and her co-owner took personal loans to keep the centre running and not take a wage. There have also been staff layoffs and the remaining staff have all taken pay cuts.

“So for our program, and we’re not unique in this aspect for our program, it means that we can afford to pay our staff what they deserve, parents will be able to fill these spaces and our current families won’t be forced to choose between child care and working.”

They all say they’ll be closely watching the details of how the program is rolled out in the coming months.

by Chris Brown

Local parents applaud child care deal between federal government and province

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