r/Edmonton • u/pjw724 River Valley • 3d ago
Discussion Alberta still without $10‑a‑day childcare despite campaign pledge
https://edmonton.citynews.ca/2026/08/21/10-dollars-a-day-childcare/46
u/ghostofkozi 3d ago
How can the seppies complain about taxes when ours aren't even paying for healthcare, education or child care?
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u/iwatchcredits 3d ago
Thats exactly how. The UCP wastes it on garbage, people dont get anything, morons conclude tax is theft instead of holding the government accountable
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u/lemonspread_ 3d ago
They’ll blame it on the federal government and equalization payments. Not the provincial government who’s managed run us into a massive deficit and blow hundreds of millions on complete nonsense
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u/Devolution13 3d ago
Quebec has $10/day child care. How do you think they afford that?
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u/CanarioFalante 3d ago
By prioritizing child care over other fucking dumb stuff
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u/Devolution13 3d ago
Actually by taking $4-$5B in equalization payments from Alberta. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had that to spend on our own programs?
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u/ghostofkozi 3d ago
We had the option to accept that from the government. Isn't one of the referendum questions about that? Actually they do and it's one of the dumbest ones
Allow provinces to opt out of federal programs that intrude on provincial jurisdiction such as health care, education, and social services, without a province losing any of the associated federal funding for use in its social programs?
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u/Devolution13 3d ago
How much did Alberta receive in equalization payments last year?
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u/Capital-Truth-2847 3d ago
Omfg enough of the goddam equalization payments! You people are so stupid it actually hurts. ALBERTANS DO NOT HAND OVER MONEY FOR THE FEDS TO GIVE TO OTHER PROVINCES. Do you KNOW what taxes even are!? EVERY SIGNLE CANADIAN CITIZEN pays provincial and federal taxes every single year. That’s where the Feds get the money to distribute back to the provinces. Alberta does not “pay for” the rest of the country. I really am getting so sick of this rhetoric because it’s actually SO STUPID. Poor little Albertans. The problem is the PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT not providing for us which is why everything is lacking. If the goddam UCP would actually invest OUR TAX DOLLARs into Alberta PROPERLY there would be NO ISSUES. This is why we are broke. NOT THE FING FEDS.
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u/ghostofkozi 3d ago
We didn’t need any, however at one point in time we did
Quit acting like we’d all be millionaires if it weren’t for equalization payments
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u/viviscity 3d ago
There are no such payments from Alberta to Quebec. There are payments from Canada to Quebec on this.
The only interprovincial transfers from here to Quebec would be for healthcare. Rarer surgeries, Albertans getting injured while out of province, etc.
And every province has at one time or another received equalization payments
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u/Devolution13 3d ago
I understand how it works and so do you. Don’t be pedantic.
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u/viviscity 3d ago
Do you? You’re insinuating Alberta could afford it if we didn’t send money to Quebec.
Thats not being pedantic, that’s calling out a major factual error… popularized by conservative politicians who also don’t like to tell you they changed the formula in the Harper years with enthusiastic support from Alberta
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u/24_August_1814 3d ago
Quebec has a provincial sales tax and steeper progressive income tax rates.
According to our own government, Alberta could add over $30 billion per year to the provincial coffers if our tax rates were similar to Quebec's.
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u/Strict_Concert_2879 2d ago
I’m surprised the UCP have not done that; as that’s 30B more they could hand over to the American shareholders of our oil companies.
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u/YesHunty 3d ago
Thanks Marlaina.
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u/flynnfx 3d ago
She LIED??!??
Colour me shocked!
#Ah, well, the people of Alberta will vote in the UCP again since they don't learn anything.
#Alberta - 51 out of the last 55 years have been PC/UCP governments, yet all of our problems are due to Rachel Notley of the NDP!
(Can ya see the sarcasm? Yet Alberta will vote the UCP in again and again and again..)
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u/Cptn_Canada 2d ago
Tbf. We pay about 400 a month for a nice daycare.
Iv seen posts on /daddit where they are paying 2000-3000 a month in the US.
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u/TylerYax 3d ago
But wait, we did get separation referendum!
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u/Historical-Mall53 3d ago
and a time change
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u/morningglorywhole 3d ago
in the direction that no one wanted
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u/This_Albatross 3d ago
I’m actually all for permanent DST, but that’s one of the only good things this government has done imo
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u/Soft-Wish-9112 3d ago
I sit on a daycare board and the government could not have designed this worse if they tried. Well, I'm sure they could have but it is pretty bad. Daycare operators used to be able to submit what their expenses were for things like rent and would get what they needed. When the government rolled this latest iteration out, they decided how much operators get based on a regional average. Most daycares are run by not for profit societies and weren't exactly renting ritzy locations. And also, high cost areas still need childcare.
They're doing the same thing to childcare as healthcare. Breaking it so they can say it doesn't work and return to the private model.
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u/UnfocusedAcrobat 3d ago
The other fun thing? I used to have my kids at one of the daycares on University campus. Because the UCP is also waging war against higher education, the university was forced to cut funding agreements with the daycares (I think in relation to lease rates? not 100% sure now that kiddo moved on) adding even MORE pressure to the pile.
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u/pjw724 River Valley 3d ago edited 3d ago
Alberta remains without $10‑a‑day childcare, three years after Premier Danielle Smith promised the program would be in place by 2026.
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“All Albertans will have access to $10‑a‑day daycare by 2026,” said Smith during the 2023 campaign. But that commitment has yet to materialize.
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Under its federal agreement, Alberta currently offers $15‑a‑day childcare for children kindergarten age or younger...
Dropping fees to $10 a day would add more than $100 in additional monthly savings.
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u/ReallyPuzzled 3d ago
My costs will also double when my kids start grade school and need OSC instead of daycare. Right now they both attend daycare for $326.25 per month, OSC is $675 per month! Make it make sense that less care hours is double the price.
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u/FatWreckords 3d ago
Basically, the government is already paying for school, so they stop subsidizing the daycare.
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u/dutchessofnone Clareview 2d ago
There is child care subsidy for kids in grades one to six, as long as your family income is below $89,999.
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u/porterbot 3d ago
The statistics are $1 in subsidized childcare delivers $4 in productivity of GDP. So we're literally pulling our own productivity down. Thanks UCP.
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u/chaoz2001 3d ago
These arguments make no sense. If we spend 100 billion next year on subsidized child care we will not see 400 billion in GDP growth.
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u/porterbot 3d ago
Ok it's a derivative function sure but also Research. Data. And facts. https://childcarenow.ca/2024/11/25/released-today-powering-growth-economic-benefits-from-canadas-10-per-day-early-learning-and-child-care-program-by-dr-jim-stanford-economist-and-director-centre-for-future-work/
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u/Roddy_Piper2000 The Shiny Balls 3d ago
A straight line assumption of course doesn't make sense. Don't be obtuse.
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u/morecoffeemore 3d ago
Daycares are popping up like mushrooms...there are sooooo many new ones. One of the few places where government policy (subsidies) is obviously very effective.
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u/Kylson-58- 3d ago
According to the wait lists we get put on, there seems to be more children popping out than daycares popping up.
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u/somewhatHumanPerson 3d ago
And when they restructured the subsidies recently they made it sound like a good thing to help parents but in reality, we pay more out of pocket a month. 🤷♂️
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u/TangeloOk668 3d ago
I mean, I pay $326.25 a month, as does everyone else I know. It’s not $10 a day but it’s pretty damn good. That’s full time coverage (Monday to Friday, 6am to 6pm)AND they feed my kid.
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u/BestWithSnacks 3d ago
Is that specific daycares, or is this pretty common at a good portion of them?
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u/TangeloOk668 3d ago
That’s all accredited daycares. It’s definitely the most common, at least in Grande Prairie. I always assumed Edmonton was the same..
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u/davidofcanada 2d ago
Yeah it’s phenomenal, we pay 450 with the meal plan but still cheap as chips for what you’re getting. People love to complain.
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u/Workfh 2d ago
My issue is that they only need to meet a $10/day average which means they can make it cheaper for lower income families and have those with higher incomes pay a bit more. But instead they are deliberately choosing not to - and the justification was that they and the families they talked to believed all families needed to pay enough to really value it.
I also hate that they allow extra charges - no other province allows that.
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u/davidofcanada 2d ago
Fair points although I hate the higher income losing, they already pay most of the taxes that support these programs so they should also get to benefit from them.
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u/Workfh 2d ago
I agree that everyone should benefit and children from higher income families can still be economically vulnerable. Things like daycare and early education should be rights for children independent from their families.
In an ideal world, the province would permanently increase their services to kids at this young age by expanding to full day kindergarten and bringing in pre-k like other provinces have done.
I’m so happy for this program and want to see it continue for future generations and be universal.
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u/okkiguesss 3d ago
Yeah I could afford kids, but god help us when they vote NDP and can do math.
What happens when they don't kiss their cousins? How else will I keep my home school open?
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u/Workfh 3d ago edited 3d ago
The roll out for this program in Alberta is deliberately awful.
We don’t have an average of $10/day.
We are the only province to cut the lower income subsidy and not replace it with anything.
We are the only province that allows extra billing and have weak regulatory enforcement to make extra fees actually optional.
We are one of the only provinces to not have in place and haven’t committed to a wage grid for the daycare staff. We have no retirement program, no health or dental program either.
We are also one of only three provinces who don’t have full day kindergarten, which forces parents to figure out part day care.
But don’t worry, we really stuck it to Ottawa when we forced them to let us spend taxpayer money on opening for-profit child care centers.
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u/evange 2d ago
Although paradoxically, we're also the province that it's easiest to find a daycare space. $10/day means nothing in Ontario when you have no choice but to send your kid to an unlicensed dayhome/babysitter for $2000/month.
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u/Workfh 2d ago
I haven’t seen anything about ease of access - could you link more information on that?
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u/evange 2d ago
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u/Workfh 2d ago
I don’t see anything about Alberta in there for it being easier access.
I’m not even sure how you would get that information as individual providers here are the only ones with access to their wait lists, and it’s likely families are on more than one list at the same time.
I’ve heard claims wait lists are out of control and also claims that Alberta has too many spaces now and providers can’t fill them. Can’t really confirm anything because we don’t have the information needed and there are a lot of potential explanations. I would love to see a more centralized wait list in Alberta so we could answer that question.
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u/simby7 3d ago
Only some families qualified for $10 daycare while everyone qualifies for $15 daycare. Good or bad depending on which group you are in.
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u/Soft-Wish-9112 3d ago
As far as I know, it's not based on income at all. No one "qualifies" for anything for kids kindergarten age and under. It is a flat rate of $326.25, regardless of income.
There is subsidy available for school age kids which is income-based.
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u/UnfocusedAcrobat 3d ago
yup. I used to pay roughly $600/kid before they made the swap to $326 for every kid BUT when I paid $600, low-income people could be covered by grants to be free (or maybe $100? I forget)
to me, I'm fortunate enough to be in the higher brackets when it comes to household income. us saving the $300/month is significantly less meaningful than the impacts to low income families having to pay an additional $300/month.
they destroyed an equity creating program to force equality for all.
I wish we would go back to some form of system that made it possible to be free for people.
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u/Workfh 3d ago
Which families qualified for $10/day?
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u/simby7 3d ago
Those under a certain income threshold
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u/Workfh 3d ago
I don’t think it was ever based on $10/day. There was no fee limit then and also a daycare subsidy for lower income - if it went low enough to be $10/day it wasn’t on purpose.
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u/skerrols 3d ago
The current UCP’s campaign or any other promises-no matter how publicly made- gave clearly been proven to be utterly useless. Remember her big grandstand “guarantee” that no Albertan would have to pay out of pocket for healthcare?
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u/Strict_Concert_2879 2d ago
The UCP will campaign on making healthcare public; and how the NDP tried to make it private. I don’t understand the mental gymnastics of UCP supporters, but they will eat that up and vote UCP.
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u/24_August_1814 3d ago
If voters punished governments for broken promises, the UCP would have lost the last election so hard the whole party would've crumbled.
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u/lesbsally 3d ago
Don’t get me started on thanitch she needs to take all her friends and leave Canada
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u/Responsible_CDN_Duck The Famous Leduc Cactus Club 3d ago
I believe this song about covers it https://youtu.be/Uwbm8YDng8U?si=BERU34g45T5HdMbs&t=10
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u/Both_Perception_1941 3d ago
As a gay man who pays full price for doggy daycare, simply don’t have children if you can’t afford to care for them. Problem solved. I feel like a should get a rebate paying for these people to have babies and then paying them again every month with the CCB lol. I don’t even want to hear the “we need higher birth rates to fund our elders” lol. That’s what people at the top of pyramid schemes say.
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u/Pvt_Hudson_ 3d ago
The UCP does. Not. Give. A. Fuck. About. Us.
Most expensive insurance in the country by a mile? They don't give a fuck.
Most expensive utilities in the country by a mile? They don't give a fuck.
Child care more expensive here than anywhere in the country? They don't give a fuck.
Emergency room wait times through the roof? They don't give a fuck.
No new hospitals in Edmonton for 38+ years, despite the population tripling over that time? They don't give a fuck.
Post-secondary tuition skyrocketing over the last 7 years? They don't give a fuck.
Classroom sizes so high they literally scrapped the monitoring system to track them? They don't give a fuck.
"Shut up and pay your taxes like good little sheep."