Federal-provincial child care announcement receives mixed reactions from families and workers impacted

“There’s sometimes where I am in the grocery store and I have to add up my groceries as I go along to make sure I don’t go over,” she said.

Lisa Wyatt, senior manager of Early Learning at Hope’s Home in Prince Albert, also welcomed Friday’s child care announcement and thinks it may help encourage more women to re-enter the workforce, as well as provide families with an overall greater sense of consistency.

“Families won’t have to worry about choosing one chid care over another, based off what the cost of what that child care is,” she explained.

The second piece of the announcement Wyatt supports is with respect to the support it provides to early child educators. A wage grid will help attract and retain early childhood educators, by ensuring they are well paid for their work. Wyatt said these same workers have in the past been paid lower wages.

“And I think the pandemic maybe made that a little bit more stronger to recognize that our economy and our work force relies on early learning and we are very much an essential service to how this province operates,” she said.

The agreement also includes a clear commitment to continue to work collaboratively with Saskatchewan First Nations and Métis Nation communities to ensure Indigenous children have access to affordable, high-quality and culturally appropriate early learning and child care.

(Submitted/ Hope’s Home)

Reaction from the Federal NDP

Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said the announcement will be a relief for families in the province who have been waiting for affordable child care services for decades.

“The Liberals have been promising a national childcare system for 28 years, continually breaking their promises and leaving families in Saskatchewan to pay the price,” he said in a statement.

Singh went on to explain that generations of parents and children needing child care are now more desperate for accessible child care because of the pandemic.

“Last summer, when the Liberals had the opportunity to invest in child care with their transfer to provinces, they refused to do what was needed. They have let parents, in particular mothers, suffer for longer than they should have,” he said.

Singh promised New Democrats will fight alongside child care professionals, unions and activists to make sure the Liberals finally keep their promise.

Reaction from Labour

The Saskatchewan Federation of Labour (SFL) is calling the announcement “historic” and a “huge victory” for working families in Saskatchewan.

“This announcement has been decades in the making and is thanks to the tireless work of the many women who lobbied the government- either themselves, through an advocacy organization, or through their union- for affordable, accessible child care,” SFL President Lori Johb said in a statement.

Johb added the SFL will look at the agreement carefully, and fight to make sure that any plan for affordable, accessible child care also needs to include a plan for good jobs in the early learning and child care sector.

“Any plan to spend federal government funding on child care should also ensure a plan for the creation of good, unionized jobs with improved wages and better working conditions for all who work in the sector,” she said.

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nigel.maxwell@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @nigelmaxwell

by Nigel Maxwell

Federal-provincial child care announcement receives mixed reactions from families and workers impacted

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