In a recent pay period, single mom Chelachatanat earned $400 and paid $370 for childcare. Fortunately for her, she can usually depend on her mother, grandmother or sister to care for her 18-month-old son Kwúsen.
Without family close by, Chelachatanat, who works in traffic control, would face probably insurmountable challenges. Not only is childcare expensive, but it is also scarce. For every five children Kwúsen’s age in the Squamish area, there is one licensed childcare space. Even if she could afford it and obtained a space, her schedule — she routinely begins work at 6 a.m. or ends at 8 p.m. — would exclude her. Most childcare providers are tailored to suit nine-to-fivers.
She wishes employers would provide daycare, but knows that’s not likely. And she understands that the licensing, hiring and other demands required to set up a new childcare facility must be daunting for anyone considering addressing the availability crisis.
“It’s such a big process that nobody really wants to put their energy into and it’s just so heartbreaking,” she said.
Squamish Mayor Karen Elliott knows the challenge faced by parents like Chelachatanat and so many others. When she was first elected to council in 2014, she experienced more anxiety than jubilation.
“Someone said, ‘Oh my gosh, Karen, you won a seat on council!’” she recalled. “My first thought wasn’t, oh, fantastic. My first thought was, I don’t have childcare on Tuesdays [when council meets]. That is a very practical response for so many women in our community who want more out of their careers.”
Families are struggling and the lack of childcare is “a crisis in our community,” said the mayor.
High housing prices mean early childhood educators, who do not earn large wages, are difficult to attract, while commensurate commercial rent costs and licensing make opening new facilities tough, the mayor acknowledged.
“Our community is full of highly skilled, highly educated folks,” she said. “When childcare becomes a barrier, we are seeing a portion of our community not returning to work and this is primarily women. … So many studies have shown that when you provide affordable, universal childcare, women are more likely to participate in paid work and that economies benefit from their participation.”
Council is taking innovative steps, Elliott said, such as approving on Feb. 18 a development that includes not only a childcare facility but two affordable housing units dedicated to staff who will work in that facility. Including designated childcare spaces in new developments is a key move local governments can take. But that’s never going to be enough without much larger commitments from provincial and federal governments, Elliott said.
“We’ll do our job,” Elliott said. “The problem is… where is the staff to then support those new childcare centres? That’s really where senior levels of government need to come in.”
The provincial budget tabled Feb. 18 increased funding for childcare and expanded the previously announced B.C. Child Opportunity Benefit. But the childcare budget increase of nearly $90 million in the next year still falls short of the $200 million required annually over the next few years to deliver the $10 a day universal childcare promised by the New Democratic Party in the last election, according to the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of B.C.
Improved pay and more training for early childhood educators is critical. Elliott lauds Capilano University for launching an early childhood education cohort of 22 students on the Quest University campus. But that alone won’t close the gap for the 80% of local kids for whom no childcare spaces are available.
There are 3,894 children in Squamish, but just 817 childcare spaces within 32 residential and 11 commercial licensed childcares, according to a District report. A survey undertaken by the District suggests almost half of Squamish parents — 49.3% — need full-day childcare, with 41.1% requiring after school care. But before- and after-school care options are also severely limited, particularly in the seven- to 12-year-old range. Only one childcare provider surveyed offered services on Saturdays and none are open Sundays.
The problem is not merely borne by families; it has economic impacts in the community. The Squamish Chamber of Commerce cites affordability and childcare as top challenges in an economy otherwise rich with opportunity. A survey of chamber members last year saw more than one in four, 27%, identifying childcare as an issue hindering employers’ access to labour.
While the statistics are not encouraging, numbers also don’t tell the whole story, said Torill Gillespie, a former planner with the District who is now a consultant working with the District on childcare issues. Her own story is a familiar one. Having experienced three childcare facility shutdowns, she finally concluded that what she needed was not available.
“I had to make the choice of my family over my career, which is what a lot of women in Squamish do, unfortunately,” she said.
Squamish is probably somewhere around average in the province in terms of the childcare crisis, but there are additional factors facing local parents, Gillespie said. Housing affordability squeezes families on both ends — pressuring the need for two working parents, which then exacerbates the already high cost of living here with costly childcare. Being a fast-growing community that skews young also means demand for childcare is high – especially since many families do not have extended family nearby and, as newcomers, many may not have the kinds of social connections that so many parents rely on for urgent, last-minute child-minding.
Still, Gillespie is upbeat. While the provincial budget did not meet all the needs for childcare in the province, the government is moving in the right direction, Gillespie believes.
“There are so many big systemic changes that I think need to happen to fix the whole childcare picture and, as we start to see those changes happening from above, that’s what’s exciting to me,” she said. “We can try to make grassroots changes in Squamish and there’s definitely things we can be doing more and better, but seeing the province start to work toward a system of universal childcare is really exciting to me and I see some optimism there.”
The attention the issue is getting is another positive, she said.
“People are starting to have those conversations. That’s where action starts and it’s going to be slow but it’s going to happen eventually,” she said, adding with a laugh: “I hope.”
