Alberta operators threaten to opt out of $10-a-day child-care deal
What are you making? Sarah Hunter loves to let her imagination run wild. Is that what you asked the owner of the imagination tree? Never imagined this bankruptcy. We're facing closure of our center. Hunter, whose family has been in the childcare business for 35 years, may have to call it quits. Why Canada's $10 a day childcare deal? Not much of a deal. She says for her, everything has gone up, but my fees are frozen. My fees are the same as what they were five years ago. I feel like it's a hostile takeover the private sector by the government. They stole our businesses. They now control everything we do. The Association of Alberta Childcare Entrepreneurs has walked out in protest over this deal. Now they're threatening to opt out. I think people are frustrated. I'm frustrated. Crystal Churcher is the association's chair. She says what private operators were and what the government delivered doesn't add up. We have businesses to run. We have to make sure that centers are viable and sustainable and provide high quality childcare. Not just childcare and daycare, but quality programming. Churcher points out. Quality costs money and the deal, while great for parents, hasn't had the same benefits for operators. If we think we can do it for $10 a day when you can't get a coffee and a muffin for $10 a day, we're delusional. No delusions for Sarah Hunter also. No decision of whether to opt out or not. But she's crunched the numbers and the crunch is real, as is her anger. We want our families to have affordable childcare. We're very much in approval of that. But what we also want is to have quality childcare. And quality childcare does not cost $10 a day, and it never will. Now, the association says the final straw for private operators was what they call a threat from the government to cut affordability grant payments unless they provide detailed financial information on their cost. Global News reached out to the provincial and federal governments, but we have yet to hear back.