‘Truly historic:’ Budget calls for child-care costs to fall to $10 a day

Lindsey Robinet knows the struggles parents face when dealing with child care.

When she was raising her three boys — now aged 18, 16 and 13 — child care was a cost that came down to some tough decision-making for the family.

“We spent thousands on child care — more than college educations as my children were younger and (we) faced a lot of really difficult decisions on whether I was returning to work working fulltime,” she said Monday. “It was a struggle. I mean, it was more than our mortgage payment.”

Now, Robinet is the director of Early Years Learning with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Saskatoon. She called Monday “truly historic,” with the federal budget steering to a more affordable child-care system.

The promise leads to $10-a-day child care by 2025-26.

“It actually gets me a little bit emotional even thinking about how hard our sector has worked across provinces, across regions and across cities to try and have a truly national child-care system in place. We’ll wait and see what happens, but this is a huge step for our country in terms of what child care looks like,” Robinet said.

Shannon Willner, executive director of Families First ChildCare Centre, said the announcement was awesome to hear.

“It’s something we’ve been asking for for years. I’ve been in child care for a lot of years … So (this is) good news,” she said.

“It’s important because right now, before this, it was only people in low income that were getting support for their child-care fees. So now it’s nice that it’s going to be equal for every parent. I think that’s important.”

Robinet echoed those statements, noting there is a lack of access and a lack of inclusion presently.

“(It’s different) depending on where they live, their socioeconomic status, whether they can obtain licensed child care, or unlicensed — all of those different things,” she said. “This type of a budget, and what they’re promising, we’ll certainly see those changes (happening) in real time where we’re going to be seeing that more inclusive approach to child care, that anyone who needs it gets it.”

Fees at licensed daycares are expected to drop by up to 50 per cent by 2022 throughout Canada, thanks to the affordable child-care promises set out Monday.

A Regina daycare advocate also is cautiously optimistic about the news.

Colleen Schmidt has pushed for affordable child care for years. She was the chair of the Cathedral Area Co-operative Daycare and served on the board for about a decade.

“We’ve been really hoping to see a significant improvement in funding for our daycares in the province. We were hoping to see that from the federal government,” she said Monday.

She believes there are many areas the extra money could go towards improving.

“The need in the daycare sector is huge. We have a shortage of spaces, we have a shortage of trained child-care workers and the daycare we have is pretty expensive, so anything that will help improve those three problems is very welcome,” she continued.

While $30 billion is a steep price tag for taxpayers, she believes it’s justified.

“Investment in child care in the early years is a tremendously good investment,” she said. “Studies will put it for every $1 you invest now, you’ll reap up to $10 in the future. So it’s definitely going to be worth it and I think it will pay off in a number of other social ways.

“It will definitely ease the pressure on women who work, because they tend to be the ones who still have to deal with the bulk of child-care issues.”

Still, while Schmidt is glad to hear the announcement, she’s not immediately writing it off as the solution to every problem.

“I (have) a wait-and-see attitude,” she said. “The devil is in the details. There is a lot to be worked out and I don’t know how this is actually going to materialize. It’s a great start, I’m optimistic, but it’s hard to say what’s going to happen.”

— With files from 980 CJME’s Dominick Lucyk