Setting up a daycare in a small NWT community? ‘It’s brutal.’

“My eyes are a bit filled with tears right now, because it’s been such a brutal process.”

Melanie Harding has spent years trying to launch a daycare in Norman Wells. She’s closer now than she has ever been, but that still feels painfully far away.

Harding and the Łegóhlı̨ Early Learning Society have secured $1.4 million over two years from the NWT government to help build a childcare facility in Norman Wells.

As a parent of children aged 18 months and four years, she says the town’s need is critical.

“There are around 30 kids in Norman Wells under the age of five whose parents and families or guardians indicated they are in desperate need of childcare,” Harding said, relaying the results of a recent assessment.

In the spring, she received confirmation from the NWT’s Department of Education, Culture and Employment that her society would receive $700,000 each year for the next two years from its early childhood infrastructure fund. That’s two-thirds of the fund’s annual million-dollar budget.

Harding said that news was “super exciting – and not nearly enough money.”

She says building a daycare is going to cost much more than $1.4 million. In Inuvik, for example, a facility built a decade ago cost more than $6 million, and costs have only escalated since.

In Norman Wells, the society no longer knows where to look for cash.

“We have been turning over every stone, every pebble, every boulder to try to find additional funding to support the building of a new daycare, because we know the need is there,” said Harding. “We know the parents are desperate.”

‘We haven’t heard a peep’

Harding now says the federal government, in particular, needs to do more.

Cheap, easily accessed childcare has been a Liberal government priority, and the NWT is partway through a multi-year plan to bring childcare costs for parents down to $10 per day. That plan is backed by $51 million in federal cash, most of which is earmarked to subsidize operating costs rather than infrastructure.

Earlier this year, Ottawa announced a separate fund through which provinces and territories will collectively receive $625 million for childcare infrastructure over the next four years.

In October, RJ Simpson – then the NWT minister responsible – said the new federal money would “take into consideration the unique infrastructure challenges in the three territories.” He said the GNWT was waiting to find out more.

Harding says she has met with NWT Liberal MP Michael McLeod and with MLAs, but has seen no sign of any fresh funding to get the Norman Wells daycare over the line.

“We haven’t heard a peep” about accessing some of the new $625-million fund, she said.

“You have a group of extremely dedicated, extremely capable people trying to create these spaces for kids who desperately need a safe, reliable place to go, and the systems just aren’t set up for us to succeed,” she said.

“The funding that’s available – $1 million a year for the whole territory for childcare infrastructure – is a drop in the hat of what one community needs to build one childcare centre.”

By email, McLeod said he’s trying to connect the Norman Wells project with the federal department that controls the cash.

“Since my meeting with the daycare proponents in Norman Wells this summer, my office has remained in contact with the organization to support their request for additional funding,” he wrote.

“We have been discussing their situation with the office of the Minister of Families, Children, and Social Development, and have been advocating for a meeting between the daycare proponents and department officials.

“I understand that the department is committed to setting up a meeting, and I hope that meeting will take place in the near future and leads to a solution to this matter.”

House of cards

Thursday is a national day of action for early learning and childcare. Patricia Davison, chair of the NWT Early Childhood Association, says trouble brewing in the territory’s early childhood sector extends beyond infrastructure.

“People are leaving the territory. People are downsizing their shifts. They’re coming off mat leave and there are no childcare spaces, so they’re not working,” Davison said, outlining the extent to which demand outstrips supply even in larger communities.

“When we don’t have spaces and we don’t have staff, it has a detrimental effect on the whole territory. Infrastructure money is certainly a big part of it, but then how do we staff that? How do we keep it sustainable? The spaces that exist now are having a hard time being sustainable.”

The NWT’s Department of Education, Culture and Employment said it was unable to provide detailed comment because of the transition between territorial governments after November’s election.

A spokesperson said the department was “in regular contact with the Łegóhlı̨ Early Learning Society” and said the society was understood to be revising its building plan.

Harding said the society is faced with two options for the building: try to cut costs so it’s easier to find funding, or delay, delay, delay until enough money is found for a better build.

“We could do this as cheaply as we possibly can – do a modular build, drive it up on the winter road and stick three double-wide trailers together using the cheapest materials,” she said.

“On the other end is doing what they did in Délı̨nę, which is a stick-build to meet the exact needs of the childcare centre. That would be upwards of $3.5 million to $4 million.

“The question facing the board right now is do we just scrape this together knowing that 10, 20 years down the road, we’re going to be facing some pretty steep maintenance costs for the facility? Or do we delay the project to try to find even more funding – triple what we currently have – to be able to know that this is a legacy for Norman Wells, a building that could last 50 years?”

Harding said the society has hired a consultant to move the project forward and is trying to find local businesses prepared to offer financial support.

Banks won’t provide loans because the society is a new non-profit in an isolated location, she said, and government-backed providers like BDC and BDIC turned the society down “because we’re a non-profit, not a business.”

Harding said if the society became a commercial entity instead of a non-profit, that might help it find funding – but it would then lose access to a range of other government subsidies.

She said Imperial Oil, approached as a large local employer whose staff would greatly benefit from a daycare, provided no money but did offer two houses. Harding said both houses are half a century old or more and the society felt they were beyond renovation into a modern daycare, but one may be used to house staff and the other may be demolished so its lot can be used.

“Everything is like a house of cards right now,” she said.

“Everything depends on everything else. Even the $1.4 million, we need to show we’ve secured the full cost of the project before they’ll confirm. The same goes for Imperial.

“ECE and ITI have done so much to make this happen. I really am so grateful for their support. And yet it’s not enough from the feds, especially in the North, with the cost of building in a world that’s facing climate change, unreliable ice roads and low water levels. It’s just not enough.”