Businesses reopen amid uncertainty over availability of childcare

A Sudbury daycare operator says they're not prepared to take in the children of people going back to work starting June 12.

That's when businesses launch into the second phase of re-opening in much of the province, including northern Ontario.

Tracy Saarikoski is the executive director of Discovery Early Learning Centre with four daycares in Greater Sudbury.

She is also a member of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care and the Association for Early Childhood Educators in Ontario.

Saarikoski says the province promised to give the industry two weeks notice to prepare and gave them three days instead, making the announcement Tuesday.

She says generally, operatorsare financially in no position to open on Friday, and she is sure that her centres will not be ready to open.

"The province is asking child care centers to do the impossible and run a program similar to emergency child care with them with no new money to come along with that. So that's a real concern of mine when we think about the safety and well-being of children and of staff," says Saarikoski.

While she is satisfied with the safety protocols and guidelines, she doesn't think most ordinary operators have the money to afford them.

"Good operators that are offering emergency child care, like ones that are here in Sudbury, are doing really great work in keeping those protocols in place, but they are also being funded at 100 percent right now."

Saarikoski says regular daycares get subsidized for varying amounts per child and generally parents pay the rest.

She says the parents of children at emergency daycares aren't paying anything right now.

Reduced ratios mandated by the provincial government will also erode the bottom line, she says.

"Right now one of my classrooms is licensed for 24 preschoolers and I'm only allowed to have eight preschoolers and two teachers."

Saarikoski says she's not sure when, or if, some operators might be able to offer childcare this summer.