Why it’s been so hard to implement $10-a-day child care

In today’s Big Story podcast, in April of 2021, the federal government announced their intention to give all Canadians access to $10-a-day child care, amounting to roughly $30-billion of federal funds over three years. In order for the scheme to work, early childhood educators are needed to staff facilities, and finding those workers has proven challenging.

Emma Arkell is a freelance reporter who wrote about child care in Chatelaine. She joins us to explain the factors contributing to widespread staffing shortages at daycares across Canada.

“Wages have always been quite low in this sector … not a lot of child care workers have extended health care benefits,” she said. “It’s difficult for a lot of them to stay in the sector when they could do similar work in the public education system and have so much more stability in their lives.”

So how can governments make child care accessible to parents in need? And how will the child-care system ensure that needs of early childhood educators are met?

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