Early childhood educators in Nova Scotia learned earlier this week that they’re about to get a pay bump, but one daycare operator says she doubts it will help with what many see as a daycare crisis in the province.
Bonnie Minard, the executive director of Portland Daycare Centre in Dartmouth, N.S., says the biggest challenge in her facility is finding enough qualified early childhood educators (ECEs).
“We’ve had ECEs leave the field for a number of years now because of historically low wages and many feel that they don’t have the respect that they deserve for what they do,” she says.
Most of the 2,600 early childhood educators in the province can expect a raise in the range of 30 per cent beginning Nov. 1, which will be retroactive to July 4.
Minard says the news has been “a long time coming.”
“Since 2016, the wage floor has remained the same. So after six years, if you go back, it would probably be three to four per cent each year, but certainly any raise is welcome,” she says. “We were hoping for more. The province used terms like ‘significant’ and ‘life changing’ – starting at $19 an hour does not even meet the living wage of Halifax.”
She adds that reaction to Tuesday’s announcement from the province has been “very mixed” among those working in the field.
“For most people, I feel like they’re gonna receive between $2 and $4.50 an hour. Obviously, any raise is good, but they just don’t feel like it went far enough for more experienced people. They were very disappointed because there was a lot of talk about recognizing experience and so it doesn’t go far enough to recognize.”
Minard says there are several contributing factors causing people to leave the daycare workforce, including the rising cost of living and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“ECEs are skilled professionals, they’re very well trained and there’s other fields that require little to no training that start at a higher wage,” she says. “When you combine all the pressures of the job, which there’s a lot, and then you combine outside pressure like financial and inflation and COVID, some people just decided that it’s too much and to take something with less stress.”
In addition to retaining current ECEs, the province hopes the impending pay raise will bring childcare workers back to the field, but Minard doesn’t see that happening.
“There’s a big shortage and it’s been a big shortage for a number of years,” she says.
She adds the announcement has affected workplace morale.
“We were hoping for a big morale boost. We were hoping for a good starting point. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of money, we know it’s a lot of money, but, we also know that ECEs deserve it,” she says. “There’s been comments ‘people should be grateful for a raise’ which they are, but they earn it, they deserve it and the deserved it five years ago.”
The pay raise comes as Ottawa and Nova Scotia bring in new framework aiming to gradually lower daycare fees and create more childcare spaces. Minard says there is still lots of information to come regarding the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement, while the need for daycare remains high.
“We have a huge waitlist. The problem is staffing and resources. The fees don’t really change too much about the operations because our centre has been typically full for quite a while and waitlists are high. Waitlists for infants and children with special needs is really high.”
Minard adds that the closure of several centres in the province this year puts more pressure on existing centres, like her’s, which currently has 91 children in its care daily.
“Some of those children are there for 10 hours a day, so they’re spending more time in a centre than they are at home during waking hours because their parents need to work,” Minard says. “But all of those little tiny humans have their own needs, their own wants – emotional needs, physical needs – and it’s a lot to meet those needs every day and to make sure that they’re getting the best quality that they can.”
