Child Care Now Nova Scotia says the federal government’s $625 million investment towards childcare in Canada is great, but not enough, especially without additional support for early childhood educators.
They say infrastructure is helpful up to a certain point, but that ECE’s need higher pay to attract more to the sector. If not, there won’t be anyone to look after the children at all these brand-new spaces.
“We can’t talk about childcare spaces without talking about the ECEs providing care and early learning to the children who fill them,” says Amber Rehill, parent and member of the Child Care Now NS Steering Committee in a press release. “Any infrastructure funding needs to be accompanied by more core funding support for ECE compensation, if it is to have any meaningful impact on childcare access.”
They say that nearly half of Nova Scotia’s children do not have access to childcare, and the government needs to take serious steps to improve that number.
Even aside from the need to address issues facing ECEs, Child Care Now says the funds announced yesterday won’t come close to delivering on the infrastructure promise made by the feds.
The government claims 52,000 spaces have already been created as they work towards their goal of creating 250,000 new spaces by 2026. To quote Child Care Now:
“This means that, if we take the federal government at its word, an additional 198,000 spaces are needed to meet this target. Child Care Now estimates that $10 billion is necessary to create these 250,000 spaces promised by the federal government–a far cry from the infrastructure funding offered in this new Fund.”
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