Parents on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast have been left scrambling after learning of the sudden closure of two child care programs.
The YMCA infant-toddler programs in West Sechelt and Gibsons are slated to close on Oct. 1.
That will result in the loss of 20 daycare spots for children aged three and under.
Donna Lynden said she learned the news in an email on Aug. 25, just five weeks before the program’s end. Adding insult to injury, it was her first day back at work after maternity leave.
“I was sitting at my office feeling like I had finally made it, the work that we had put in for the previous year to get my younger son into this daycare felt like it was finally paying off and that I could work and have weekends and evenings with my family,” she said.
“We felt absolutely abandoned to receive that message. We just absolutely didn’t know what we were going to do, we were scrambling.”
Parents say they were told staffing problems were behind the programs’ closures, with significant problems recruiting and retaining early childhood educators (ECE).
The YMCA has recently lost three of its child care staff.
“(It is) difficult to find housing and affordable housing on the Sunshine Coast, it requires a certain level of income, and you don’t get paid that level of income as an ECE, so unfortunately, they go elsewhere,” parent Chelsea Phillip said.
“Everyone here is very supportive of the topic, everyone here wants to see this work. No one is doing anything to make a difference, no one is moving the needle, we aren’t getting people here — the promises of them being paid better is not happening.”
Gibsons Mayor Silas White said the YMCA has been trying desperately to fill positions for several years, and had been able to manage by relying on the temporary foreign worker program for a while.
“The YMCA recently lost two workers to Northern British Columbia because they could pursue their permanent residency track there in in terms of a temporary foreign worker program,” he said.
“So it’s a really interesting broader discussion going on with the premier calling for the possible elimination of the temporary foreign worker program when at the same time … we completely rely on it right now for some of our really critical workforce needs in health care and in child care.”
The YMCA did not respond to a request for comment.
The province, meanwhile, said federal cuts to the Provincial Nominee Program — an immigration stream that allows provinces to nominate people with in-demand skills for permanent residency status — has worsened the problem.
“The primary reasons for these recent closures are the reductions to the PNP program, the provincial nominee program, that’s a federal initiative,” Powell River—Sunshine Coast MLA Randene Neill said.
“So the education minister and I have written a letter to the federal ministers asking that they look at those numbers so that we can bring those early childhood educators back to B.C.”
The YMCA is set to meet with parents in Gibsons on Monday night and in Sechelt on Tuesday.
But without a speedy solution to replace the ECEs, parents will be left without daycare coverage.
“These spaces are so hard to come by,” Lynden said.
“It’s like finding a needle in a haystack.”