Photo: Supplied from the Prairie Lily Early Learning Centre Facebook Page
By: Danielle Dufour
The Saskatchewan Government recently announced updates to Saskatchewan’s child care program with impacts to eligibility including age coverage, standard daily child care hours and operational funding effective July 1st to protect the long-term sustainability of subsidized child care systems.
“The changes that are coming in July 1st are really going to hamper the amount of spaces available, especially in rural Saskatchewan,” said Joan Pratchler, MLA Opposition Shadow Minister of early learning and child care.
Pratchler explained when a full-time child care space wasn’t being used during a day, the daycare could ‘stack’ or take on a casual or drop-in child to fill that open space. The government would allow them to have the $10 a day funding grant. With the changes, this is no longer the case.
“The most amount as of July 1st that a child care provider can charge if a casual wants to join is $10 a day, that means a dollar an hour now,” said Pratchler.
Those extra casual spaces offered funding that daycare centers could use to run their operations. Many operators will no longer offer drop-in child care as of July 1st because they won’t be compensated to the level they require to fully support a child being in the centre.
“Which tells you how much this child care is not funded as it needs to be, to be a viable business. That’s really a challenge,” said Pratchler. “Who works for a dollar an hour?”
Pratchler noted that the government has also cut the funding to the training programs for early childhood educators.
Day care operators are allowed to offer 10 hours maximum for the $10 a day spaces impacting those who work long shifts, like healthcare workers or mine workers.
“Providers can charge extra, well that flies in the face of $10 a day child care,” said Pratchler.
Pratchler wants the government to recognize child care as a valuable part of keeping the economy alive and said, “Because women need to work, you need to have two people being able to make ends meet in an affordability crisis here in our province.”
As a former Catholic school principal and registered nurse, Pratchler would like to see more collaboration between the government and child care providers.
Cara Steiner is the Executive Director of the Prairie Lily Early Learning Centre that operates three licensed day care centres for child ages zero to six, and three unlicensed before and after school programs for grades one through six in Regina.
Steiner says that changes to funding really come back to the original issue that many child care programs have been facing, “Our funding is often inequitable across the sector, and it is making it increasingly challenging for programs to continue operating in Saskatchewan.”
Steiner noted that when the Canada wide early learning and child care system came into play, programs that were already operating in Saskatchewan joined the system as they were, with no adjustment to fees or wages and that those operators came into the system with a wide range of operating costs.
“It’s really hard to sustain operations in 2026 on a budget that was built in 2021 or earlier,” said Steiner.
She feels programs have been put into positions where they must consider charging enhanced program fees to families such as extended hour fees, program fees for field trips and outings and some nutrition fees for food offerings above menu requirements.
“It’s just going to make it difficult, it’s offloading the responsibilities of system building onto parents rather than investing further dollar into a system, we’re again asking parents to again pay increase child care costs,” said Steiner.
Steiner points out the $10 per day would not cover the cost for a drop-in child in the centre, when considering additional food or craft supplies or materials.
“Without the full funding for the space, it is cost prohibitive and it’s difficult to be adding extra children into centres without receiving the full amount (of the grant),” said Steiner.
Prairie Lily Early Learning Centre fundraised $17,000 last year to help cover operational costs. They also used cash reserves to remain operational, yet they still had a very large operational loss.
Although she realizes government system building takes time, Steiner is concerned that having to pass on additional costs to families may result in losing children and families that have been apart of their community.
“We really love our families, and we love the community that we’ve built at Prairie Lily,” said Steiner.