Local Councillor Jessie Morden has been waiting a long time to get her daughter into daycare.
“My daughter is two, and we’ve been on the list for two years now and still can’t get in. We’re on every list in Whistler,” she said.
Morden’s story is not unusual for Whistler, or, for that matter, B.C. According to a recent report from the Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives, nearly two out of three B.C. children not yet in Kindergarten live in so-called child-care deserts—postal codes with more than three children below school age for every full-time licensed child-care space. Even as $10-a-day child-care rolls out across Canada, “one of the major remaining stumbling blocks is that there simply aren’t enough child-care spaces to meet the demand,” the study concluded.
In Whistler, with its high proportion of young families and longstanding worker shortage, the impact is even more acute, as identified in the municipality’s 2020 Whistler Child Care Project Action Plan. “The biggest barriers to providing child care in Whistler relate to the ability to attract and retain qualified staff in existing facilities, as well as access to facilities,” the report stated.
Now, the Whistler Institute is looking to reverse that trend. Recent recipient of two separate grants, from the Whistler Blackcomb Foundation and the Resort Municipality of Whistler’s (RMOW) Community Enrichment Program, the charity will use the combined $5,200 to prepare its application to offer an Early Childhood Education (ECE) training program locally that would be fully subsidized to qualified students through the province’s Project-Based Labour Market Training program. If approved, the certification course would be facilitated by Sprott Shaw College.
“Daycare is so intrinsically connected to the workforce shortage we are seeing in Whistler,” said Suki Cheyne, executive director of the Whistler Institute. “If there are people who want to work but they can’t put their child into child-care spaces, it’s part of that whole cycle of the labour shortage. We know there is a shortage, and we are trying to look at how to alleviate that in different ways. This would mean more new parents can go back to work.”
Cheyne said the grant funding will be used for community and stakeholder engagement and outreach, which will include consulting with local daycare facilities to better understand local needs.
At this point, there’s no guarantee the application will get the go-ahead, but given the resort’s glaring lack of daycare spaces, WorkBC has indicated the Whistler Institute has “a good chance at being successful,” Cheyne said.
Morden, who gave birth to her second child earlier this year, is hopeful a local training program will encourage local nannies—of which there are many in Whistler—to obtain their ECE certification.
“There’s a Facebook nanny site and so many people in town offer nanny services, some of whom may not be trained in that field specifically, so this would give them the opportunity to be trained to work in that field and stay here,” she said. “I think it’s going to be beneficial to everybody to have this training in Whistler.”
Morden said she is scheduled to meet soon with Whistler Mayor Jack Crompton and fellow councillor Jen Ford to discuss the local daycare issue and how they can effectively lobby the province for improvements at September’s Union of B.C. Municipalities Convention in Vancouver. One major ask? Expanding $10-a-day child-care options in the resort.
“It would be huge to have that at every centre and to make it easy and fluid within the system so that everyone can benefit from it, rather than just a shortlist of people,” Morden said.
If all goes according to plan, Cheyne said the Whistler Institute expects to offer the nine-month ECE program in late 2023 or early 2024. For more information, visit whistlerinstitute.com.
