The Northwest Territories is now following an Alberta approach to day homes that allows their operators to charge voluntary fees for additional services.
In the territorial legislature last week, Range Lake MLA Kieron Testart said some of the NWT’s day homes were struggling financially because of what he termed “stagnant subsidy support from the government.”
Testart said day homes charging fees for extra services is something with which he believes clients are comfortable. He added similar practices are already in place in other jurisdictions such as Alberta.
In Alberta, providers of childcare are allowed to offer optional services for an additional fee, as long as families can choose whether to participate.
Those fees can’t cover the likes of equipment, toys or the day-to-day costs of programming, but day homes can charge for the likes of field trips, meals and snacks, after-hours care, diapers, sunscreen, specialized classes or cultural activities.
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Responding to Testart, education minister Caitlin Cleveland said the NWT informed daycare and day home providers earlier this year that they can adopt a similar approach.
“There are some some rules around that,” she said. “The fees do need to be voluntary and they can’t hold back other kids within the system if their families are unable to meet the requirements or the asks of the voluntary fee.”
Testart said some day homes remained unaware they could introduce such fees, though Cleveland said the territory’s association representing childcare providers had also been informed.
In further questioning, Testart asked if the wage subsidy provided by the GNWT for day home providers would be updated “so it reaches parity with daycare centre providers.”
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“The work of day home providers is different from daycare centre providers,” he said.
“Their wage grid does not take into account longevity of service provided in the North, education or Indigenous knowledge.”
Cleveland said her department reviews average wages across daycare and day home providers to ensure they are on par. She noted work was done to raise the wages of daycare service providers, which had been significantly lower, using funding worth $3.5 million announced earlier this year.
Childcare across Canada has undergone a significant overhaul in recent years through the federal push toward $10-a-day childcare, which has come with tens of millions of dollars in funding for the GNWT alongside a set of rules the territory must work within.
Cleveland said administering the program is costing jurisdictions across the country “a tremendous amount of money.”
“It is not properly funded for us to be able to administer this federal program the way we’d like to do so,” she said.
Whether any aspects of the program will be earmarked for change in this week’s federal budget is not clear.
