Daycare operator in Sudbury, Ont. had to temporarily close 3 sites due to staffing shortage

A French-language organization that runs 11 daycares in Sudbury, Ont. and surrounding towns has had to temporarily close three daycares in the last year and a half.

Stéphane Gauthier, the executive director of Carrefour Francophone, said he's been unable to hire enough early childhood educators to fully staff the daycares.

"You can say until you're blue in the face that you're making all the efforts to recruit. The fact is that we've had two resumes of qualified workers in the last year," he said.

Gauthier said his organization lost a lot of workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and it's been difficult to attract new early childhood educators because of low pay.

"We've been grasping at all kinds of straws just to make things easier, more flexible, but in the long run, and at the end of the day, you just have to have a more decent wage," he said.

While municipalities, and daycare providers manage their day-to-day operations, it's the province, and specifically Ontario's Ministry of Education, that manages their funding.

In January the province increased the starting wage for registered early childhood educators by 19 per cent, from $20 an hour to $23.86 per hour. Registered early childhood education program staff who make under $26 an hour are also eligible for annual wage increases of $1 per hour.

"This new hourly rate will bring them in line with the starting wages of school board-employed RECEs (registered early childhood educators), helping to narrow the gap and create interest in the profession," Ontario's Ministry of Education said in an email to CBC News.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce has said the provincial government plans to add 86,000 child care spaces by building new daycares and hiring more staff.

But Gauthier said the recent wage increases set by the province aren't high enough.

"We were already there, so it should be much higher, at least $27 an hour to start," he said.

He added that it's more difficult for French-language daycares to find qualified staff because not enough people are graduating from local programs, and there are fewer people in general who speak French in the region.

The province said it also funds a wage enhancement grant which supports an increase of up to $2 per hour, plus 17.5 per cent benefits for eligible child care professionals working in licensed child care settings. The cap for the wage enhancement is $30.59 per hour, as of Jan. 1, 2024.. 

The Ministry of Education said the province is providing $750,000 annually under the Canada-Ontario Early Learning Child Care agreement to the Association francophone à l'éducation des services à l'enfance de l'Ontario to support professional learning projects. 

"This funding is to enhance culturally relevant programming and the delivery of high-quality French-language childcare and early years programs," the email said.

'Not very glorified work'

Stéphanie Bossé is an early child educator with Our Children, Our Future in Sudbury, which runs daycares in both English and French.

Bossé said she became an early childhood educator nine years ago when she was unable to find a daycare spot for her son.

"I was actually a dental hygienist before," she said.

"I could not find somewhere that I felt comfortable leaving my son as far as a daycare that wasn't, you know, a super long list to get in. So I got a job at one of the local daycares so that he could have a spot. So that's how it started for me."

Bossé said early childhood educators are underpaid for the work they do, which includes curriculum planning to help promote a child's development through play-based learning.

"It is very demanding work. I mean, you're dealing with all sorts of different children with different needs and it seems like the ratios, the numbers just keep growing," she said.

"It's just, it's not very glorified work I guess."

Bossé said some French-language daycares are now hiring staff who speak very little French to fill in roles that would be left empty otherwise.

"So even in the French daycares, there's a lot of English speaking people now," she said.

A 'multi-pronged' approach to the labour shortage

In an email to CBC News the College of Early Childhood Educators, which regulates and governs Ontario's registered early childhood educators, said it acknowledges there are "long-standing systemic issues that the early learning and child care sector continues to face, including challenges with recruiting and retaining qualified professionals."

Cynthia Abel, the college's director of registration, said in the email that it will require a "multi-pronged approach" to address the recruitment shortage as the province implements the Canada Wide Early Learning and Child Care agreement with the federal government.

That approach includes working on retention and incentivizing former early childhood educators to return to the field.