In Banff, a place at day care costs $1,350 because the province says the town has enough

A new child care centre in Banff will open charging $1,350 a month. The subsidized rate is $326.

Nothing a parent could see explains the difference between those two numbers. Not the staff, not the square footage, not the room. What sets them apart is a designation: the Government of Alberta has determined that Banff already has adequate child care, and declined to extend affordability funding to the site.

Mayor Corrie DiManno says 108 Banff families are on the waitlist.

“It continues to be disappointing that the province deems us as having adequate childcare when we know that to not be true,” she told council on 11 August.

Before the funding decision came, a not-for-profit run by volunteers had already put $150,000 into the project.

“It is also extremely frustrating being that a not-for-profit run by volunteers has put $150,000 into a solution, then just to have the script flipped on them at the last second and to have the funding yanked out from underneath them,” DiManno said.

She has asked to meet Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides at the Alberta Municipalities Convention, held 22 to 25 September, and press for the decision to be reversed.

The meeting, if it happens, will not really be about one building in one mountain town. It will be about how a province decides that a community has enough child care, because that judgement is the entire distance between $326 and $1,350.

One hundred and eight families are waiting for a place in a town the province has determined does not need one.

Source: RMOUTLOOK – Banff’s mayor seeks meeting with province over tourist town’s childcare crisis