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Province increases funding for child care centres

The Brandon Sun - 6/2/2021

After earmarking $1.9 million to support early learning and child care facilities in mid-May, the Manitoba government revealed on Monday that it is increasing that funding by $500,000.

Families Minister Rochelle Squires said that this jump to $2.4 million is being made to accommodate the province’s decision to extend remote learning for schools located in Brandon and Winnipeg until June 7.

“Service providers have told us the extension of remote learning will result in increased financial pressures due to the loss of parent fees and we are pleased to provide this protection,” Squires said in a Monday news release.

The minister first announced this $1.9 million in child care funding on May 12, a few days after the province revealed that K-12 schools in Brandon and Winnipeg would be transitioning to remote learning until May 30 due to an influx of COVID-19 cases across Manitoba.

This past Thursday, Premier Brian Pallister announced that this period of full-remote learning will be extended to June 7 as COVID numbers continue to put a major strain on the health-care system.

Squires estimates that this transition to full-remote learning impacts 10,890 child care spaces or 83 per cent of the school-aged spaces in the province. She said this extra $500,000 is needed to offset child care centres’ loss of parent fees for kindergarten and school-aged children.

Even before this transition to remote learning, Squires acknowledged that child care centres have had a rough time throughout the pandemic, where widespread financial insecurity has forced parents to pull their children out of these programs in record numbers.

“We know that the sector has been in a great state of flux. It is an anomaly to see 4,100 vacancies in our child care sector,” she said on May 12. “We want to ensure that all Manitobans get back to work as soon as possible in the post-pandemic era. And we know that having a strong, robust child care sector is essential to that post-pandemic recovery.”