Parents and child-care professionals in Manitoba are calling on the goverment to increase funding.
Lorraine McConnell, with Brandon’s Children’s Den, says they’ve launched a campaign called “Childcare is Essential”.
She says “One of the short term initiatives they’re calling on the government to do, is back-fill the fees the centres lost when they were forced to close because of COVID-19.”
For Children’s Den, McConnell says fees account for 55 to 60 percent of its revenue – and because of added expenses for things like personal protective gear and hand-sanitizer, provincial operating grants are just not cutting it.
She says a petition has been launched at childcareisessential.ca (a link can be found below) specifically “in response to and against the attacks on our childcare sector that have arisen during the COVID-19 pandemic, and those we foresee with the KPMG report commissioned by the Manitoba provincial government, expected to be released this summer.”
McConnell says the goal of the campaign is to create “a fully accessible, publicly-funded, non-profit system of comprehensive and high quality childcare with worthy wages and good working conditions for childcare staff.”
She says Brandon childcare centres have not see any new government money in 4-and-a-half years.
