Sask. daycares struggling to afford affordable child-care

Saskatchewan daycare operators say that costs keep rising, even though their child-care fees do not.

While $10-a-day child-care and higher provincial standards for daycares are positive in the eyes of parents, those balancing the books on the day-to-day operations of daycares in the province are saying their businesses are becoming unsustainable.

Jerrelei Sabri is the operator of Little Toes Daycare in Saskatoon’s Brighton neighbourhood. She had to shut down her home daycare for two weeks last month because she said she is barely making enough money to cover her operational costs.

“Don’t open a daycare,” is her advice, based on her own experiences since the $10-a-day model was implemented. “It’s not for the weak.”

Read more:

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In January, after receiving her Parent Fee Reduction Grant — the grant paid by the Saskatchewan Government that covers fee costs for licensed and regulated child-care spaces for children under six — Sabri said she only made about $163 in profit after covering her other business expenses for the daycare.

On a monthly basis, parents with children at these licensed and regulated child-care spaces are paying $217.50 each month, with the province making up the difference on the fees these child-care spaces would have charged prior to the implementation of $10-a-day child-care.

Provincial regulations about how many children daycare operators are allowed to have in their care — based on children’s age, the size of their space and the type of provider — and the number of assistant caregivers required in a daycare according to these regulations did not change when the reduced child-care costs came into effect. However, Sabri said, around that time, her space — a 3,200 square foot home — was judged to be appropriate for eight children, plus her own two kids. Previously, she was able to care for 12 children, including her own, in her space.

On the Government of Saskatchewan’s website, Sabri’s daycare is listed as a group family child care home, which is allowed by the province to care for up to 12 children, provided there is an adult assistant caregiver in addition to the primary provider, depending on the number and ages of children in Sabri’s care.

In addition to losing two spots, Sabri said she was told she would need to have two staff members to run her daycare.

“I do not know why. A lot of the daycares have only one,” Sabri said, “but for some reason, with mine … I am required to have two.”

Sabri said most of the $800 she receives each month from her provincial grant goes to covering food — healthy meals and snacks — for the children, expenses like outings for the children to places like the Nutrien Wonderhub, utilities and internet (used for cameras running at all times in her home). Covering the cost of two staff members and with two fewer spots to charge for, in addition to her other expenses, is setting Sabri back financially.

Jerrilei Sabri, who runs Little Toes Daycare in Saskatoon’s Brighton neighbourhood. She says her costs nearly outweigh the money she’s bringing in from her daycare. (Submitted)

Sabri said another factor causing her to struggle in January was an unexpected bill from the province, recouping money from her that the Ministry of Education alleged Sabri had been overpaid for several months in 2025.

That overpayment for June, July and August, Sabri said, amounted to almost $8,000 that she was charged last month.

Saskatchewan’s Minister of Education, Everett Hindley, said in an interview that he is not aware of the ministry regularly billing child care operators for overpayments. Other daycare operators in the city have said reconciliation payments are not out of the ordinary.

She said her space is inspected on a monthly basis by the province and each time, she inquires about any potential issues or concerns. Sabri said she has always been given positive reports and never had any indication she would see a bill like this.

“They did not correct me,” Sabri said. “Nobody educated me, nobody guided me.”

Sabri has had to take a second job nursing at night because she is simply not making enough from her daycare business.

“I have to pay for a mortgage … It was really tough,” she shared. “I was really actually threatened to just shut off the daycare or just go to private.”

Her concern over pricing and affordability for the families whose children she cares for is what has kept her operating until this point.

“I love the kids and if not for the kids, I wouldn’t do this anymore,” Sabri said.

She has also written to her local MLA about her concerns, but said she was told that because she is considered to be a for-profit private business, her fees cannot be increased. The focus, she said, is on continuing to make daycare centres more affordable for families.

“They forgot about the day homes,” Sabri said.

Sabri has also been dealing with several health problems over the past number of months. She attributes some of them to the stress she has had since the implementation of the $10-day child-care fees and the pressure this has placed on her small business.

“I have been operating and complying and all of a sudden, I am not complying for the last three years,” Sabri said.

“This is insane.”

Mylah Brausse plays at the park during a daycare outing with other kids. She attends Little Toes Daycare. (Sheena Roszell/Submitted)

Daycare centres also suffering

In an interview on Wednesday on The Evan Bray Show, similar financial struggles were flagged by Bailey Fleck, the director of Weldon Childcare Inc. and chairperson for the South East Saskatchewan Directors Association.

Fleck, who herself has three children under the age of 10, and has been in the child-care industry for the past 15 years. Weldon Childcare has 36 licensed child-care spaces in it, three rooms and cares for children from six weeks to 12 years old.

While the child-care fees centres were charging before have now been capped, the expenses child-care centres are having to pay to operate continue to grow – staff wages, food, supplies for children’s programming, and taxes, to name a few.

“Everything else in the world has been able to increase,” Fleck said, “but our fees, which are supposed to be our income that offsets our staff wages, have been locked and it’s seriously catching up with a lot of centres.”

That’s leaving child-care centres with dwindling staff numbers and higher rates of burnout, Fleck explained.

Fleck also highlighted the implementation of a “quality baseline assessment” for all child-care centres in the province, where a representative sent by the Ministry of Education is offering improvement and operations suggestions to each centre.

It’s a great idea, Fleck said, keeping all centres to a higher standard. Unfortunately, it also means that to implement Ministry recommendations, cuts have to be made elsewhere. Programming for children and additional support staff are some of the places where costs are having to be cut to ensure those other higher standards can be met.

“We’re no longer able to bring in casual staff to cover our staff so they have time to program and plan activities for the kids. We’re no longer able to have floater staff to cover bathroom breaks, because in child-care centers, it’s not so easy just to go to the bathroom when you have a group of 10, five kids that you’re caring for,” Fleck explained.

When Saskatchewan and the federal government announced the five-year extension to the $10-a-day child-care, the Government of Canada agreed to pay more than $1.6 billion to the province over that many years to support “access to high-quality, affordable, flexible and inclusive early learning and child-care programs and services across the province,” according to the release announcing the renewed agreement.

Fleck doesn’t think that funding will have as much of an impact as the province is hoping.

She referenced that the funding is expected to come next month, but said there are some centres that are struggling just to survive that long.

“I just think that when these funds come in, it’s going to be too late and some centers are going to have to close their doors or look at some other drastic options to be able to maintain their operations,” Fleck said, calling the situation “unfortunate.”

She noted that the situation isn’t as drastic for every centre because each receives a different amount of funding. If centres were operating prior to the $10-a-day model, the money it receives is based on the fees the centre was charging at the time the new fees came into effect. The province allowed for up to a five per cent increase for centres operating prior to the $10-a-day fee, for a period of time, but fees are now capped for centres.

Fleck noted that some centres, which were opening just as the $10-a-day model came into effect, were able to strategically set their fees higher, ensuring more funding. Eventually, though, rising costs will become too high for all licensed, registered child-care facilities, Fleck said.

“It’s never going to be a perfect world, and we’re totally understanding of that,” Fleck told Bray, “but I think the biggest thing is, us directors have pushed for there to be communication with us throughout the province and we have seen zero of that.”

Responding to concerns

Responding to these concerns in an interview with 650 CKOM, Minister Everett Hindley said the Government of Saskatchewan is hearing the concerns of child-care centre and home daycare operators and is taking them seriously.

“We’re working through the program and trying to make enhancements. We want to, wherever we can, try to alleviate those concerns and address them through the measures that we have available to us,” the minister said.

Hindley said part of the reason the province took extra time to re-sign onto the $10-a-day child-care deal with the federal government was to acknowledge these challenges and will continue to bring these challenges forward to the federal government.

The Government of Saskatchewan, he said, has taken a number of steps to make child-care affordable for people in the province and support the sector, generally, assisting with start-up costs and ongoing operating costs for children with enhanced needs, as well as professional development and training.

The minister said there is work being done to understand situations on a case-by-case basis and expressed concern about frustrations with lacking communication from the province.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to better reflect the current requirements on daycares in the province.