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Canmore facing significant lack of childcare spaces

“Anyone who’s a working knows when your childcare is going great, life is great. When it is sour, life is sour. It is so stressful to be out of childcare or to learn your daycare provider is possibly closing their day home.”
Canmore Civic Centre in winter 3
The Canmore Civic Centre. RMO FILE PHOTO

CANMORE – A new assessment for the availability and accessibility of childcare in Canmore shows the community to be woefully underserved.

A report shown at Canmore’s committee of the whole Tuesday (Jan. 17) outlined the lack of space for the vital service, which has led to people leaving the community, adjusting work schedules to look after children or struggling to find adequate childcare.

“Recruiting and retaining staff is one of their biggest challenges,” said Elle West, the Town’s community evaluator of the five licensed daycares in Canmore. “Staff are needed to meet the mandated adult-to-child ratios, but low wages paid for early childcare staff means that many leave for other jobs with higher pay or leave Canmore for a lower cost of living.”

The report emphasized there were not enough childcare spaces to meet community needs, but that creating new spaces wouldn’t entirely solve the issue.

It noted affordability, staff that can afford to live in Canmore, space around non-traditional working hours and provincial legislation are impacts on the shortage.

West said there are unlicensed day home options in Canmore, but it’s difficult to track the number available and the amount of people using them.

She said the licensed daycares are doing their best to maximize space for children, but are faced with staff shortages and every provider has a waitlist of about 100 or more with the waiting time being 16 to 17 months. She added it’s led to families not being able to access childcare before a child reaches school age.

West noted there are no weekend, evening or early morning licensed childcare options available before 7 a.m. in Canmore.

“Anyone who’s a working knows when your childcare is going great, life is great. When it is sour, life is sour,” said Coun. Joanna McCallum. “It is so stressful to be out of childcare or to learn your daycare provider is possibly closing their day home.”

Day homes are a discretionary use in most Canmore neighbourhoods, but need the approval of landlords, condo boards and property managers. The assessment stated a childcare agency said about two day homes per year try to open, but are unable to.

McCallum said she was “quite disappointed” to learn of landlords not allowing day homes in rental projects that had been approved by council in the past five years since they “made a point of ensuring those places have the ability to provide childcare in those units.”

She added the Town will have to continue to lobby the province and Banff-Kananaskis MLA Miranda Rosin for assistance in childcare.

The provincial government is providing funding through the Space Creation Grant to licence non-profit and home-based childcare providers where there’s a high need, but Canmore was deemed low and funding unavailable.

The grant’s goal is to achieve 42,500 new childcare spaces by 2027.

The largest area of need, according to the Town staff assessment, is families with kids up to three years old as they’re “uniquely challenged with accessing childcare,” according to the report. There are no spaces for children up to one-year-old in Canmore, West said.

The province, according to the report, uses a formula that looks at existing childcare enrolment numbers in a municipality, the number of open spaces and the total population between zero and six years old.

The assessment gave the example of a community with 50 childcare spaces available and 100 children under six would have 50 per cent coverage. The calculation had Canmore at 23 per cent, with adequate being above 33 per cent.

West said when there’s less than 33 per cent coverage, it’s considered a childcare desert.

“It’s startling to me that 63 per cent of communities in Alberta are in a childcare desert and we’re certainly in that desert ourselves,” said Canmore Mayor Sean Krausert. “If you’re in the childcare desert, it baffles me how we can be as low need. It’s reflective of a possible widespread problem. We’re going to have to define for ourselves what is adequate and work in that regard.”

While Canmore comes on the low end of need, the report stresses the community’s uniqueness such as the high cost of living, staffing challenges, childcare workers earning below-average wages and necessary flexible childcare hours to work for people in the service industry aren’t factored.

“Our community is being deprioritized for funding based on a general tool that applied to the whole province without consideration for our community’s unique characteristics,” West said.

The assessment has 2,055 kids 14 years and under, with 620 four and under and 720 five to nine. It found Canmore has 304 childcare spaces, but staffing shortages led to 244 operating. The provincial government’s childcare lookup tool shows 539 childcare spaces, but the assessment stated a number of spaces aren’t specific to Canmore and are in other places like Cochrane.

The assessment was funded through the province’s Family Resource Network grant.

It came on the heels of the federal and provincial childcare agreement, which has the purpose of increasing accessible and affordable childcare. The agreement will see $3.8 billion invested in the next five years.

Depending on the amount a family earns per year, childcare can cost between $10 and $22.19 a day, per the agreement. The goal is to have all Alberta families pay $10 a day for childcare by 2026.

The assessment stated of 131 municipalities, 11 are deemed high need, 12 moderate need, 60 low need and 48 have adequate childcare resources.

A Town-led survey had 215 families with 332 children respond and represented about 16 per cent of kids in Canmore. Of those, 92 per cent were Canmore residents, 70 per cent worked in Canmore and 84 per cent used local childcare.

The responding households had 87 per cent totalling an income of less than $180,000, with 60 per cent working full-time. Additionally, 62 per cent were first on a waitlist with the average time being 16-17 months, 54 per cent were unable to get the childcare needed and 28 per cent said lack of childcare impacted their ability to work. A total of seven per cent said they had no issues with childcare, but while the struggles to gain childcare were notable 87 per cent said they were satisfied with the care received.

An additional survey was organized for businesses and had 19 businesses respond with 331 staff. Of those, 95 per cent of respondents said childcare impacts the time of day people are available to work and 63 per cent said childcare needs affect wages. It also found 84 per cent said it impacts the days of the week staff members can work.

“Appropriate and affordable childcare is an essential component of a livable and equitable community,” the assessment’s conclusion stated. “Accessible and quality childcare supports child development as well as increases employment and economic opportunities, particularly for women.

“For Canmore to continue to be a community where all residents thrive, families need accessible, affordable, and quality childcare services.”

For level 1 early childhood educators (ECEs), the average pay is $16.75 with a top-up to push it to $18.89. Level 2 ECEs are $17.87 and $21.92 with the top up and level 3 ECEs are $19.55 and $26.17 with the top up. However, to reach level 3 more than two years of training are needed.

The assessment noted the COVID-19 pandemic only served to make the local childcare options more challenging – especially during public health-mandated closures – which have primarily impacted women.

“According to Statistics Canada, the daily routines of families were disrupted due to the pandemic, and although both men and women took on additional family tasks, the responsibility for parental tasks disproportionately fell on women,” stated the assessment.

It emphasized many daycare facilities have yet to return to their pre-pandemic hours, with the main reason being a shortage of staff. Further hampering the hiring of staff is the often below-average wages for such workers and the high cost of living in Canmore.

Coun. Wade Graham praised the report, but called it one of the “more depressing reports” he had read, given the dire need for childcare for community members.

Krausert said he plans to hold a roundtable discussion with community stakeholders and interested parties for childcare in Canmore to find potential solutions and learn what assets and resources are available and needed.

He said he hopes to see it take place in the coming months.

“When here, if anywhere, we need both parents working at least one job each in order to get through and that’s not the same for other places in the province,” he said. “Therefore, we need more spots per our population than perhaps than another.”


CHILDREN IN CANMORE

  • 0-4: 620
  • 5-9: 720
  • 10-14: 715
  • 0-14: 2,055
  • Information from Statistics Canada 2021 census
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