Sault's child care sector wants to see more recruitment, retention of educators

Stakeholders in Sault Ste. Marie’s childhood sector are encouraged by the $13.2 billion agreement signed by Ontario and Canada aimed at lowering daycare fees for families and delivering an average of $10 a day child care by September 2025, but say more early childhood educators are needed in order to make that agreement work. 

The head of the District of Sault Ste. Marie Social Services Administration Board — the board which acts as the service system manager that distributes funding for 1,494 licensed not-for-profit child care spaces locally — says the funding announcement has been “a long time coming.”  

“The fact that Ontario and the federal government have been able to sign this deal and get it done, we’re very optimistic about what it means for the parents and children in our community,” said DSSMSSAB executive director Mike Nadeau, speaking with SooToday Monday.

Robert Burns, chief executive officer of the Sault Ste. Marie YMCA, called the funding commitment "a historic moment for children and
families in Sault Ste. Marie and across Ontario" in a statement released Monday.

“Thanks to this agreement, child care will be more affordable and more accessible to working families," said Burns. "The federal-provincial child care agreement will benefit our children and community for generations to come. 

“We are optimistic that it also allows [early childhood educators] to be recognized as the essential workers that they have proven to be, especially during the past two years.”

Parents of children aged five and under in Ontario will begin receiving rebates for licensed child-care fees in May and can expect to see costs cut in half by the end of the year as part of the six-year funding commitment, which Nadeau says is “a significant, significant commitment, and it’s going to be very well appreciated by families who have children in the licenced child care system.”

“A 50-per-cent reduction in the first year is going to be a significant relief to existing parents,” he said. 

The child care deal also provides for the creation of roughly 86,000 new child care spaces for children five years old and younger.

Although Child Care Algoma Executive Director Anne DeLuco believes Monday’s announcement is “good news” for Ontario families and the province’s child care sector, she tells SooToday that more registered early childhood educators will be needed in order to operate those new child care spaces. 

“It is in my opinion that if 86,000 new child care spaces are going to be created by the end of the five years we must see a significant influx of registered early childhood educators entering into the child care field,” said DeLuco in an email to SooToday. “For some time we have been struggling due to the extreme shortages of qualified staff and I will remain optimistic the national child care plan will also help to address this.”

Both the social services board and the local YMCA agreed Monday that the key to making the $13.2-billion agreement work in Ontario is the creation of a strategy aimed at compensating registered early childhood educators fairly in an effort to recruit and retain more workers in child care settings. 

“Obviously we’d like to see the [early childhood educator] wages increase — I’d love to see them at par with the school board teacher’s assistants,” said Nadeau. “One of the barriers to expanding the system is the number of early childhood educators that are available.

"There is a shortfall of early childhood educators across the country, provincially and locally, so that’s one of the reasons why service managers who have been asking for a strategy, to increase the compensation for those folks who are doing some really great work, just as an attraction and retention strategy.”

“A well-trained and well-compensated child care workforce will be critical to this plan,” said the YMCA of Sault Ste. Marie via news release. “We are encouraged to see considerations for workforce included within this agreement and we will continue to join with YMCAs across our province to call for a comprehensive strategy to support the recruitment and retention of early child care educators.

“Government funding can help the YMCA and other child care operators to attract, train and retain child care educators.” 

“It is really tough work. It’s challenging work, and it’s really, really important work — and it takes a really special skill set to be able to work in a child care setting, so we’re hoping that the commitment to increase wages will be welcome news by the people who are working in that profession,” Nadeau said. 

There are more than 5,500 child care centres and 139 licensed home child care agencies in Ontario, with around 464,000 licensed child care spaces across the province.