THOMPSON — Lynn Martin has dedicated most of her adult life to caring for other people’s children.
Even before Martin became an early childhood educator — an industry she’s now been a part of for nearly 30 years — she knew first-hand the importance of having a strong support system for society’s youngest and most vulnerable people.
Growing up in Ontario, she became pregnant as a teenager. In order to graduate and move on to college, she took advantage of her high school’s child-care program.
“The thought of finishing high school and leaving my child with someone where I wasn’t near him was heartbreaking for me,” Martin says. “Who could I trust? I just imagined how many other parents also felt this way.”
She adds: “I went into child care to ensure that parents had a safe and quality place where they could trust the people that were caring for their children.”
Martin is the director of Early Learning and Child Care Thompson, as well as Kiddies Northern Preschool, splitting duties between the two centres throughout the week. She is proud of the work she’s done over the years, including the last 16 she’s spent in the small northern Manitoba city.
But while she’s doing her best to provide the sense of security that each family desires and deserves, it pains Martin to admit she’s falling short of her own standards because, in reality, she’s being set up to fail.
It’s a dire situation that’s not limited to Thompson, but affects all child-care centres in small northern Manitoba towns, including The Pas, Flin Flon, Snow Lake, Grand Rapids and Churchill.
“There is no quality to the programs. And this federal agreement keeps talking about quality child care and here’s money to improve quality,” Martin says. “How can you tell parents that this is quality? It is not. And, honestly, at this point, what we are doing is babysitting. Because we don’t have the resources, the funding and the staff to provide quality early learning experiences that will benefit these children in the future.”
In 2021, Ottawa and the province signed the Canada-Manitoba, Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement, which committed $1.2 billion in federal funding over the next five years.
MATTHIAS JOHNSON PHOTO
Lynn Martin, director of Early Learning and Child Care Thompson, says northern centres don’t have the staff nor the funding to provide quality early learning experiences.
The money aims to make child care in Manitoba more accessible to families by lowering costs and creating thousands of much-needed spaces, particularly for kids under the age of six. It is also supposed to expand a skilled workforce to improve programming and give children the best possible start in life.
But according to Martin, as well as other child-care directors in northern Manitoba who spoke to the Free Press, the influx of cash has done little to address any of the issues that have plagued Manitoba’s child-care system for decades.
While these issues aren’t unique to northern communities, the problems are magnified north of the 54th parallel, and are much harder to remedy — if they can be fixed at all.
“We’re tired of it being glossed over in the north,” Martin says. “It’ll be 30 years this year that I’ve been doing this, and I’ve tried to change careers because I couldn’t see myself doing it anymore — I’m exhausted. But this is where my heart is, and the kids and families that need us deserve better.”
Nearly a dozen people, including four directors representing six child-care centres and hundreds of children in northern Manitoba, gathered in a boardroom at the University College of the North in Thompson on a sunny morning in late March to discuss the fragile state of child care in their remote communities.
The most pressing issue, they all agreed, centred around staffing. Constant absenteeism, low wages and stressful work conditions, as well as the small pool of potential hires, have wreaked havoc.
“My biggest beef is being short-staffed all the time,” says Anne-Marie Bosters, who has been the director at Teekinakan Day Care Centre in Thompson since 2011.
“When you’re short-staffed, something isn’t getting done because you’re scrambling to make up for it. It’s constant.”
”When you’re short-staffed, something isn’t getting done because you’re scrambling to make up for it. It’s constant.”–Anne-Marie Bosters
Brenda Gill, who has been the director of Gillam Preschool and Child Centre since arriving in the small town of 900 people from Toronto with her husband in 2012, sits down with a piece of paper every morning and tries to plan the day based on the number of staff missing. Rarely a day goes by where she’s not down at least one person, and far more often it’s multiple people.
To operate effectively — if everyone showed up for work — Gill says she would need around 16 staff. In late March, she had a pool of 21 employees to draw from, including part-time workers.
Two others are on maternity leave. Another recently informed her they were quitting because they had checked themselves into a substance abuse program — a move she fully supported. A few weeks back, a long-time staff member suddenly quit.
JEFF HAMILTON / FREE PRESS
Nearly all northern Manitoba child-care centres operate on provisional licences because the government’s minimum standards are out of reach.
Gill says she has around 10 staff who show up on a regular basis. Considering that even those reliable workers fall ill — a common occurrence when working with germ-spreading kids — it’s easy to understand why Gill is forced to work a split shift, often filling a void on the floor in the mornings and late afternoons.
Gill said her centre’s board of directors decided a couple of years ago that employees would get 12 sick days a year — a generous allowance compared to most centres in the province. By the end of February this year, four people had already used up their sick time.
As a dairy farmer’s daughter, Gill says she prides herself on her work ethic, and never is that tested more than when she’s coming up with ways to keep the centre operating.
“We were struggling with staffing in September (2019) before COVID-19 hit, and that was because we lost three staff that month for maternity leave,” she says. “Since then, we’ve never recovered. It’s been an ongoing problem.”
Crystal Chubb is the director of two child-care centres in Thompson — Keewatinowi Awasisak Opi-Ki-Wak and Grassroots Early Learning & Child Care. The week before she was interviewed by the Free Press, she had been down five employees for two days.
Like Bosters, Chubb is often forced to be on the daycare floor to make up for absences. Luckily, she says, one of her centres has a school-age program, and she can draw staff from there to make up for the shortage at the early-years location.
“A lot of times, if we’re that short, it becomes, ‘How do you feel about just not taking a break today and working straight through?’” Chubb says. “The job is already hard enough and it only becomes harder when staff are constantly missing work.”
“The job is already hard enough and it only becomes harder when staff are constantly missing work.”–Crystal Chubb
Robin Kelleher, a supervisor and mentor at Early Learning and Child Care Thompson, recalls doing three people’s jobs when nine staff members — more than one-third of their entire workforce — were absent on a particularly rough day.
“As soon as that second staff calls in sick, you start praying that kids are home sick, too,” adds Martin, the centre’s director.
Despite dealing with constant absenteeism, centres must adhere to the required ratios for each program. For full-time centres — which account for most child-care operations in northern Manitoba — the staff-to-child ratio for children between 12 weeks and two years is 1:4; it is 1:8 for children two to six years old.
Ensuring safe ratios is like playing an unwinnable game of chess. There are so many moving pieces that it’s nearly impossible to manage on short-staffed days.
The only alternative is to shut down the centre for a morning or afternoon — perhaps an entire day.
Every director acknowledges that closing is rare, but it’s a tough pill to swallow when it happens. No one wants to disappoint families, and when they’re forced to close, they can’t charge parents the daily fees. Losing much-needed revenue only restricts already-tight budgets.
“You always try to make it work,” Bosters says. “Calling families is your last resort.”
Manitoba is currently short approximately 1,000 early childhood educators. A provincial spokesperson said the province recently established a workforce development unit that is exploring ways to improve child-care educational opportunities for all regions, including through the expansion of programs in partnership with the University College of the North.
However, the staffing shortage is so acute in northern Manitoba that some directors feel they no longer have any leverage. Because the centres are so desperate, firing an employee often creates more problems.
“We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place,” says Gill of Gillam Preschool and Child Centre. “I don’t do very well with firing people for not showing up, and I’m sick to my stomach about it, because there’s nobody to replace them. My job is to let families go to their job, and if I can’t staff the centre three out of five days, then I’m a failure.”
Martin and Kaitlynn Flett, the assistant director at Early Learning and Child Care Thompson, resisted firing employees for years. But they reached a breaking point when staff began dictating when they would show up.
“People were texting me what time they were coming in,” Flett says. “I wasn’t going to lower my standards, and they weren’t even that high.”
“People were texting me what time they were coming in. I wasn’t going to lower my standards, and they weren’t even that high.”–Kaitlynn Flett
Many directors believe they have no choice but to let staff go when the circumstances warrant it, because the constant absenteeism has bred resentment among the more reliable employees, who are left to pick up the slack while receiving no additional compensation.
In most cases, staff don’t get fired as much as they just quit, often by simply not showing up anymore.
Sometimes they take jobs at other centres that might be offering better shifts or a slightly higher wage. Or they know of a director who is more accommodating to their needs or who is more tolerant of no-shows because they’re too desperate to let anyone go.
“The staff who are consistent are burning out. There’s resentment because they so badly want you to fire that person because they keep missing and missing (work),” Bosters says. “But you can’t. I fired somebody last year, finally, after a long time of putting up with their absenteeism. But then it took me four months to fill that position again.”
Often, dissatisfied workers leave the industry entirely. Directors say they can’t compete with other careers that require a similar skill set.
Some people leave to become educational assistants with the school system or for a job with Jordan’s Principle, a child-first concept developed in Canada that ensures services for First Nations children are unhindered by jurisdictional disputes. Both offer more money, and with the school system there’s the added benefit of being off for the summer and on holidays.
In some instances, because child-care work can be extremely challenging, the hours exhaustingly long and the pay incredibly low, staff leave and accept a couple of dollars less an hour to work at a gas station. That’s usually the case for those who haven’t any additional schooling and therefore are making at or near minimum wage.
Directors say low wages is the No. 1 complaint they hear from their staff — even more than colleagues skipping work.
“It’s led to a revolving door with staff,” Chubb says.
“The pay doesn’t make them feel appreciated for what they do. Wages are a problem at every centre, even those that can afford a bit more, because it’s often still not enough to keep people around.”–Lynn Martin
According to the provincial wage grid, there are four formal designations for trained staff, with the lowest being child-care assistant (CCA), which involves completing a 40-hour course. Then there are early childhood educator II and early childhood educator III — ECE II and ECE III — and those are achieved following years of schooling, either through a college or university program.
There are five different levels of employment at child-care centres, from lowest to highest: floor worker, supervisor, assistant director, director with an ECE II and director with an ECE III. Employees who have their ECE II or ECE III designation can work at any level, while CCAs are only able to work on the floor.
According to the province’s child-care wage grid for 2023-24, the starting wage for a trained CCA is $17.04 — less than $2 an hour more than Manitoba’s minimum wage of $15.80 — with a “target” wage that is only a handful of cents higher, at $17.17. The “target” wage is what the province feels should be the goal for centres when determining what to pay staff, based on its funding model.
ECEs working on the floor make between $19.53 and $23.77 an hour, depending on experience and whether the centre is able to pay the starting or target wage. Supervisors receive between $23.32 and $27.67 an hour; assistant directors between $24.53 and $29.25; director with an ECE II between $25.58 and $33.60; and director with an ECE III between $27.27 and $36.84.
In early May, the province announced a 2.75 per cent wage boost, which takes effect in July. For those making the minimum daycare wage, that works out to only 47 cents more an hour.
“I’ve heard people say they leave the field because they feel there’s no future,” Martin says. “They go, ‘I’m 23 years old and I’m an ECE II and this is it? This is what I’m going to do my entire life?’ The pay doesn’t make them feel appreciated for what they do. Wages are a problem at every centre, even those that can afford a bit more, because it’s often still not enough to keep people around.”
In April 2023, when the province announced a move to $10-a-day child care for children enrolled in infant, nursery and preschool programs at licensed child-care facilities, it was universally applauded by families.
The then-governing Conservatives proclaimed child care was now more accessible than ever, allowing parents to re-enter the workforce, while also being able to afford high-quality care for their children.
JEFF HAMILTON / FREE PRESS
An acute staffing shortage is an ongoing challenge for child-care centres in the north. Low wages is the biggest complaint directors hear from employees.
Those working on the front lines had a much different reaction. While they agree it’s a great deal for families, they say the millions of dollars spent to subsidize parents’ fees focused solely on accessibility at the expense of quality.
Many directors wondered why the federal money wasn’t being used to increase their annual operating grants, which had been frozen since 2016. The grants were increased by two per cent shortly after the Kinew NDP government came to power last fall and then by another five per cent following the government’s first budget, though those increases don’t match rising inflationary costs.
“It’s everything the government does,” Bosters says. “Every time you have a child-care announcement it’s, ‘Oh, the government is doing this. They’re so great.’ And then you’re thinking, I still can’t afford to pay anyone anything or improve our programming. Nothing got better as far as quality goes when they rolled out the $10-a-day.”
When it comes to assessing the level of quality in child care, the province has established minimum requirements in the Community Child Care Standards Act.
These standards are used to approve annual licences for centres, which are assessed by child-care co-ordinators employed by the provincial government. A licence lets prospective families know whether a centre meets minimum standards in areas such as supervision, environments, health, safety and behaviour management.
If a centre is unable to meet one of the requirements, it is issued a provisional licence. Those licences allow centres to remain open while they work toward meeting all the required minimum standards.
Martin spent five years as a provincial co-ordinator before returning to her role as director in 2016. She left the job because her definition of quality and what the province expected were starkly different.
“As long as they’re meeting the licensing requirements of safety, then they won’t close them down,” Martin contends. “Co-ordinators aren’t there to improve quality, they’re there to enforce minimum standards and that’s all.”
A Free Press analysis of the 18 child-care centres in northern Manitoba — 10 in Thompson, three in The Pas, two in Flin Flon and one each in Snow Lake, Grand Rapids and Churchill — revealed that all but one were operating on provisional licences. Only Little Dreamers Day Care in The Pas had been issued a full licence.
Two centres — Riverside Day Care in Thompson and Kiddie Korner Day Care (school age program) in Flin Flon — were missing only a fire and/or health inspection. That’s a common occurrence in northern communities, where it takes longer to get inspections done; in fact, all but three of the 17 provisional licences analyzed were missing either one or both inspections.
JEFF HAMILTON / FREE PRESS
It happens rarely, but there are times when directors have to shut down for a morning or afternoon because a centre can’t be safely staffed..
Martin’s Kiddie’s Northern Preschool was issued a provisional licence because one or more of her staff had yet to complete the 40-hour course needed to be classified as a child-care assistant. Nine other centres had the same issue, which can be addressed relatively easily.
But there are other issues with no quick or simple solutions.
When it comes to staffing, the province has set a minimum standard that two-thirds of all employees in the staff-to-child ratio must meet the requirements of an ECE II or ECE III. This is to ensure children are receiving the best quality care from a group of mostly trained and experienced workers who have a strong understanding of childhood development and know how to effectively manage the unpredictable child-care environment.
But of the 17 centres in northern Manitoba that were issued a provisional licence, 10 didn’t reach that minimum standard. Chubb says both her centres were running below 50 per cent of trained staff, while Gill in Gillam only wishes she could have that many qualified workers, with her centre coming in at around 12 per cent.
The rest are somewhere in between.
The province also requires centres to have at least one ECE II or ECE III with each group of children. It’s a modest expectation, and yet seven centres fall short of that low bar.
Workplace programs allow employees to work towards their ECE II designation in-person or online, with the government willing to fund another position to replace staff while they’re in school. And while some centres have found a way to make it work, most don’t have enough reliable employees or can’t find anyone to backfill the temporary vacancy.
Centres are so desperate for staff with ECE qualifications, that recent graduates — many of whom are in their early 20s — are often quickly promoted to positions such as supervisor and are fast-tracked to becoming directors.
“They are nowhere near ready to even be an ECE on their own, never mind a supervisor position,” Martin says. “We’re stressing them out because we’re setting them up to fail. You have directors harping on them because they’re not doing their job, and they don’t know how to do that job yet because they just graduated.”
Directors are expected to have their ECE III, since that additional year of school covers how to effectively run a child-care centre. Perhaps there’s no better indicator of the challenges in finding trained employees than the fact that six centres in northern Manitoba have their top job filled by someone who doesn’t reach the province’s minimum standard.
Both Chubb and Gill, because of the difficulty in finding qualified workers, can’t use all their allotted spaces. Chubb can only fill 90 of her 102 spots, while Gill has at least 10 of 70 spaces left empty.
Because Gillam is so small, Gill says her best chances of getting a trained ECE is if the spouse of a Hydro worker — people in that industry making up a large chunk of the town’s population — happens to be qualified. That’s only occurred once in her 12 years there.
Her search is made even harder by the fact that housing in Gillam is reserved for employees of Hydro and the town, so even if someone wanted to work there, they’d have no place to live. The lack of available and affordable housing is an obstacle common to all northern communities.
Meanwhile, directors in Thompson, based on their collective waiting lists, estimate there are 150 to 160 children under the age of six in need of child care. Gill says she has a list of 10 families and knows it would be longer but for the common understanding in town that it’s impossible to get a spot. There are similar waiting lists across the north.
When it comes to safety measures, the results are equally concerning.
Seven centres have at least one employee who hasn’t completed first aid or CPR training. An equal number of centres have at least one staff member who hasn’t been cleared by a criminal record check and/or through the child abuse registry.
“Everything is so intertwined that you have to fix everything to fix one thing.”–Lynn Martin
No one wants to admit this publicly, but centres can be so hectic that there’s no time to assess who has cleared what checks when it comes to assigning staff to children.
“I have two staff that started in October and they’re still waiting (for clearance),” Bosters says. “We can’t leave those two staff alone, so we’re constantly switching staff around…. It just kind of screws up everything.”
“Or you send child abuse checks in and nothing shows up,” Chubb adds. “They’re like, ‘We have no record of anything,’ so then you have to send everything in again.”
Other violations found in the Free Press analysis include four centres having insufficient records on children dating back two years; four centres that failed to advise the provincial director of changes in staff; and two centres that do not comply with all health regulations and guidelines pertaining to food storage, handling and serving.
The problems are so systemic that there are no magic solutions. It’s how daycare works in the north.
“Everything is so intertwined that you have to fix everything to fix one thing,” Martin says.
— with files by Katrina Clarke
jeff.hamilton@winnipegfreepress.com
Jeff Hamilton
Multimedia producer
Jeff Hamilton is a sports and investigative reporter. Jeff joined the Free Press newsroom in April 2015, and has been covering the local sports scene since graduating from Carleton University’s journalism program in 2012. Read more about Jeff.
Every piece of reporting Jeff produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.