More child care centers, at lower cost for families, coming to Saskatchewan

Day care for $10 a day. Within the next five years, that will be the average cost for families in Saskatchewan under an agreement reached between the province and federal government.

Announced in August, this plan is being made possible by new funding in the government of Canada’s budget for a community-based system of high-quality early learning and child care across the country. By the end of next year, the cost of regulated child care in Saskatchewan for children under the age of 6 will be reduced by 50 percent. The agreement and additional federal funding also will create 28,000 new regulated early learning and child care spaces in Saskatchewan. In addition, more public dollars are being committed to increase the wages of child care workers in the province. Saskatchewan’s most recent budget included $101 million for child care and early learning, a $2 million increase over the previous year. In part, that money goes to grants for new and existing home child care providers.

According to Statistics Canada, 47 percent of Saskatchewan children between the ages of 0 and 5 were in regulated or unregulated day care in 2020.