St. Albert resident Shandrie Lewis felt Alberta's $25-a-day day care pilot project was almost too good to be true.
“I wasn't actually expecting it to last as long as it did. While I was disappointed (when it ended), I honestly, all I can say is I'm just totally beyond grateful to have had it for as long as we did,” she said.
The pilot project ended on April 1 of this year.
Lewis had both her daughters in the YMCA Citadel Child Care centre, one of three day cares in St. Albert that were able to pilot the program when the pilot project was brought in April 2018. Her oldest daughter is seven and no longer in day care, but her youngest, Ruby – who is five – is still in the day care but will be going to kindergarten in the fall.
“I'm actually going to take her out at the end of June and find other options for her over the summer. So, fortunately, I mean, it's only really April, May, June, that will affect me,” she said.
As a working single mother, Lewis said it has never been an option for her to not use day care and she has had to pay for child care regardless of the cost.
“If people want to be able to work and further their careers, they don't really have many options other than to pay for child care. People will tend to find the money for what's most important. I know I can speak for myself and other parents that (it) is a top priority for a lot of people and that it benefits the child and the family dynamic as well."
The program saved Lewis around $500 a month – money that went toward things like extracurricular activities. Despite being disappointed the program has ended, Lewis is grateful.
“I only have a large amount of gratitude for this over the last three years. I realized we were a very fortunate day care to have been granted this $25-a-day pilot project. I wasn't expecting it ... I was at the day care before it came in. But the fact that I did get to receive that relief for the past three years – I do feel very fortunate,” said Lewis.
Candace Stecyk, general manager for YMCA of Northern Alberta, said the end of the pilot program has meant families have to make a choice.
“The biggest piece is the impact that it's had on the family because they now have to make that choice: ‘Do I work? Do I continue to work? Do I go back to work? Or do I stay home and take myself out of the workforce because the cost to run child care is high?’” she said.
Stecyk said the parents affected most by the end of $25-a-day day care are the low-income parents who have no option but to continue working and paying for child care.
Low-income parents were still able to receive a subsidy on the pilot project and were, in some cases, paying nothing for child care. Those parents still qualify for the subsidy, but with the end of the pilot project, they have gone from paying nothing for child care to around $700 a month.
“There are people who work, who are single and there's people who work frontline ... they require that child care piece. And so it's just disappointing for them and it's hard to see them having to go through that,” she said.
In an emailed statement, Minister of Children's Services Rebecca Schulz said the $25-a-day pilot program served just seven per cent of children enrolled in licenced child care.
“Our enhanced child care subsidy model, the highest in Canada outside of Quebec, reduced child care fees for more than 21,000 children with some families paying as little as $13/day in the centre of their choosing, not just a select few,” she said.
Schulz said centres with a concentration of vulnerable families were offered transition grants to ensure those families won’t fall through the cracks.
Last month, she said, the government also announced $9.7 million in new space creation grants that will create 1,500 more spaces in a variety of settings, including overnight care in areas of the province where finding child care can be a challenge.
“We know that access to quality child care options is essential for parents to get back to work and for our economic recovery,” she said.
Mireille Peloquin, director of the Francophone Parents Federation of Alberta that oversees the Centre d’Experience Prescolaire said they were really sad to see the program go.
“We were really glad to have had the support of the provincial government. It's not to say that that support couldn't have come in a different manner,” she said.
There were two Francophone pilot project locations in St. Albert, but even with the two locations, there were still some issues with the pilot program.
“We had a lot of parents on the waiting list we were never able to accommodate all the parents who wanted to get into our day cares at $25-a-day, which was the downside of the program,” she explained.
The end of the pilot project has hit parents with more than one child in child care the hardest. Peloquin said they’ve lost an abnormal number of registrations this month.
“We've lost about ten per cent of our registrations because of the change over from like the 31st of March to the first of April. But our day cares, we have available spaces now, which is rare for us. We haven't seen that the last three years,” she said.
Peloquin was also not surprised to see the pilot scrapped. She said the current increase in subsidy level is helpful and it helps more families, but it isn’t $25-a-day.
“As far as the impact on a family on a family's income the present system doesn't impact, like the $25-a-day,” she said.
In an interview, NDP Leader Rachel Notley said the end of the program is a tremendous loss and she feels like it is a step back for the province.
“The single most effective investment that the government can make in growing the economy. Is it funding, universally accessible, affordable, high-quality child care,” she said.
Notley said she regrets not being more aggressive when her party was in government in getting the program out the door.
The government isn’t releasing a lot of the documentation about the pilot program, she said, but the outcomes they were able to measure were promising.
“The results were truly encouraging and delivered the same results that we've seen in other jurisdictions that have introduced universal affordable child care. And so, you know, it's long overdue in Canada,” Notley said.
