A new study shows 94 per cent of daycares in Saskatoon have wait lists.
The report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which looks at child care across the country, was released this week.
It shows Saskatoon has the fifth highest number of daycares with wait lists among Canada’s largest cities.
“Right now, we’ve been telling people on the wait list it will be about a year wait,” Shumi Zaman, who cares for 62 children at Saskatoon’s YWCA, told CTV News.
More child-care spaces are needed in the city, as is more government funding, according to Zaman.
“Subsidy plays a factor as well, because we do have people that are on our waiting list who would need government subsidy to attend daycare and that kind of stuff,” she said.
Regina is just below Saskatoon on the national study’s list, with wait lists at 93 per cent of daycares.
No other Saskatchewan cities are included in the data, but Shayelle Hiltz, a mother in Warman, says the waiting situation is much the same in her city.
Hiltz put her six-month-old son, Rhett, on a wait list last month, with the hope he’ll have a spot by the time she returns to work in June. She’s on the list with at least 100 more people.
“I guess the only other option would be to find a friend who stays at home with their kids, or a stay-at-home nanny,” she said. She’s also considering seeing if her family can afford for her to stay off work.
Saskatchewan’s most recent budget allotted a little less than $56 million for operating existing child-care spaces and creating new child-care spaces, according to the provincial government.
A total of 360 newly funded child-care spaces opened in Saskatoon in September, and the number of spaces across the province has increased 63 per cent since 2007, the province wrote in a statement to CTV News.
“The Government of Saskatchewan has also signed on to the Early Learning and Child Care Framework agreement with the Government of Canada. Once the agreement has been fully negotiated and is in place, it will include $1.2 billion over the next three years (for the entire country) for early learning and child-care programs,” the statement read. The agreement translates to $41 million over three years for Saskatchewan.
Kitchener is the highest on the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives study’s list, with 100 per cent of daycares maintaining wait lists. The lowest cities, St. John’s, Saint John and Ottawa, all land below 50 per cent.
Ottawa is the lowest, at 37 per cent, but the study notes the city keeps a waiting list registry, making it unnecessary for centres to keep their own waiting lists. How this affects Ottawa’s number for 2017 is unclear, but the report notes 96 per cent of the city’s daycares had waiting lists last year.
The study, which also looks at child-care prices across Canada, shows costs in Quebec, where the province subsidizes fees, are lowest. The monthly costs for child care for an infant in Montreal and Quebec City, for example, are $168 and $183, respectively.
“I think what the study shows is that you can make child care affordable through public policy,” said Martha Friendly, with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. “The way you do it is to fund the services the way they have in Quebec for some years and set an affordable fee.”
Monthly costs in Saskatoon and Regina are shown in the study at $900 and $875, respectively, while the price of care for an infant in Toronto is highest, at $1,758.
The study’s data was collected between June 2017 and October 2017 via phone survey. All licensed and regulated full-day child-care centres, or licensed child-care homes, were called in most cities, according to the report. In cities in which only a random sample of centres or homes were surveyed, the study’s numbers are accurate within plus or minus 10 per cent, nine times out of 10.
