News Releases

News Release - Canada and Manitoba

July 22, 2021

Governments of Canada and Manitoba Announce Two New Child-Care Centres Opening Soon in Winnipeg



Manitoba families will soon benefit from 108 additional child-care spaces at two new child-care centres opening soon in Winnipeg.

“Child-care is not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said Ahmed Hussen, federal Minister of Families, Children and Social Development. “The pandemic has made it abundantly clear that we need affordable, flexible, inclusive and high-quality child-care, and these new spaces will allow more children to have the best possible start in life.”

“Our government is committed to ensuring families in our province have access to quality affordable child-care,” said Manitoba Families Minister Rochelle Squires. “I’m pleased to announce the opening of two new child-care centres in Winnipeg to support families, as we continue on our path to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.”

Construction has been completed on a new 8,360-sq.-ft. centre at Université de Saint-Boniface (USB) that will create 16 infant and 64 pre-school spaces, for a total of 80 new child-care spaces in the St. Boniface area. The Centre d’apprentissage et de garde d’enfants de Saint-Boniface Inc. will provide child-care services to families who are studying and working at USB or living in the broader francophone community in Winnipeg.

The $6.6-million project was supported by $900,000 in capital grant funding through the Canada-Manitoba Early Learning and Child Care Agreement signed in 2017, as well as an additional $36,000 in startup grant funding. The centre will also receive almost $450,000 per year in annual operating funding.

Squires noted USB provided $2.9 million for the project, with the Association Étudiante de L’Université de Saint-Boniface providing the balance of $750,000. Another $2.1 million was provided by the federal government through the Canada-Manitoba Agreement of Minority-Language Education and Second-Language Instruction. 

“These investments are key to ensuring the vitality of French in Manitoba while allowing our children to grow and develop in a country that promotes both our official languages,” said Mélanie Joly, federal Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages. “Our government is proud of its investments to date and aims to continue to support minority-language early learning and child-care education throughout Canada.”

The new centre is expected to open in August.

Construction has also been completed on a new 3,600-sq.-ft. centre on Selkirk Avenue that will create four infant and 24 pre-school spaces, for a total of 28 new spaces.

Little Stars PLAYhouse will serve families of Winnipeg’s North End community, and will include culturally appropriate early learning and child-care programming.

The $1.7-million project was supported by $900,000 in capital grant funding under the 2017-19 to 2019-20 Canada-Manitoba Early Learning and Child Care agreement, as well as $12,600 in startup grant funding and up to $145,820 in annual operating funding. 

The Manitoba Metis Federation provided an additional $600,000 for the project through its Louis Riel Capital Corporation and the Infinity Women Secretariat, and the remaining amount was raised through in-kind service donations and fundraising led by Women Healing for Change, a volunteer-based, non-profit charity organization.

“We were pleased to have the resources and capacity to step in when this project was at risk and ensure that these day-care spaces were made available to Manitoba families,” said Frances Chartrand, Minister for Health and Early Learning Child Care with the Manitoba Metis Federation. “We’re particularly proud that Little Stars PLAYhouse will offer educational programming on Métis culture and language. If all partners are able to work within the nation-to-nation, government-to-government framework, we can accomplish many more great things for early learning and child care in our province.”

The new centre is expected to open in September.

The Canada-Manitoba Early Learning and Child Care Agreement delivers more than $15 million annually for early learning and child-care investments in Manitoba. Including the 2020–21 investments, the federal government will have provided Manitoba with a total of approximately $62.4 million over four years for early learning and child care. The governments of Canada and Manitoba are working to extend the current bilateral agreement to continue to support the early learning and child-care sector.

Federal Budget 2021 proposed a generational investment of $30 billion over the next five years to build a Canada-wide early learning and child-care system, with a goal of reducing regulated child-care fees by an average of 50 per cent by the end of next year and to an average of $10 a day within five years.

Squires noted that 769 spaces have been created in Manitoba through the bilateral agreement to date, and that an additional 232 spaces are expected to become available by the end of next year. As well, provincial Budget 2021 highlights the creation of 541 new centre-based child-care spaces and 50 new home-based spaces over the course of the next fiscal year through operating grants.

Manitoba’s capital grant program continues to fund spaces, such as those announced today, in addition to the $4.7-million Child Care Centre Development Tax Credit, which will create up to 682 spaces over five years and 260 spaces by the fall of 2022. This builds on the Manitoba government’s record of creating more than 4,000 new child-care spaces since coming to office in 2016.

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BACKGROUND INFORMATION ATTACHED

 
 




Backgrounder
BG-Two_New_Child_Care_Centres-FAM.pdf - https://www.gov.mb.ca/asset_library/en/newslinks/2021/07/BG-Two_New_Child_Care_Centres-FAM.pdf