How Immigration Cuts Added to the Sunshine Coast’s Child-Care Problem

Donna Lynden thought everything was coming together. When she returned from maternity leave after having her first child, she worked evenings and weekends while her husband worked normal business hours.

When her son was almost four, she enrolled him in the West Sechelt YMCA in the centre’s three-to-five-year-old care program. That helped her get her second child, at 11 months, into the centre’s infant and toddler care program, letting her work normal hours.

“Juggling work schedules was not an easy arrangement for our family,” Lynden said. “Seeing an option to avoid that was like answering a prayer.”

On her first day back at work in August, Lynden, a sign language interpreter, was just settling into work. That’s when she saw an email saying the YMCA will close its infant and toddler care programs at the West Sechelt and Gibsons locations on Oct. 1 due to staffing shortages. The closure cut 16 spots from a region already strapped for child care.

YMCA BC says the closures are the result of the federal government’s cuts to the number of workers who can immigrate to B.C. under its provincial nominee program.

“It was the exact opposite of the day that I was expecting to have,” Lynden said. “I went from the high of feeling like everything is all sorted, to within a moment feeling like everything has crumbled.”

A group of affected parents say the closure has upended their lives and at least a dozen won’t be able to head back to work.

They want the provincial and federal governments to protect the few child-care spaces left by ensuring care workers are compensated enough to live on the Sunshine Coast.

“This is a massive issue that has gone on for a really long time,” Lynden said. “I hope, with this coming to a head, that we can finally get some help or action that we desperately need.”

She adds the closure highlights systemic issues with immigration, housing and care work jobs.

B.C. Education and Child Care Minister Lisa Beare was not available for an interview but said in a statement her ministry has reached out to the YMCA to look into potential solutions.

“I understand that news of these child-care programs ending can be deeply stressful for families,” the statement said. “Our government recognizes how important access to child care is for families and communities.”

Lauren Mathany, a senior vice-president at YMCA BC, said many of the licensed child-care workers came to the Sunshine Coast through the provincial nominee program. Three key staff members moved to northern B.C. in search of better chances of getting permanent residency.

“We've had to make the incredibly difficult decision to close the infant-toddler programs,” Mathany said.

She added the immigration cuts have made it increasingly difficult to find workers with early childhood educator qualifications in B.C.

“This isn't a new issue; it's really part of a systemic issue that's happening on the coast and other areas of the province,” she said.

Parents of the 16 affected children are scrambling to find alternatives in a region already strapped for child-care spots.

Parents like Chelsea Philip, whose 11-month-old was enrolled in child care at the West Sechelt YMCA. A marketing and communications professional working in tech, Philip said she was relying on the West Sechelt YMCA’s care program to return to work.

“I have a job where I am on the phone taking back-to-back calls,” she said. “That would not be possible to do with the toddler running around.”

She’s not alone. The affected parents include first responders, like firefighters and paramedics, a nurse and a veterinarian.

“It’s been frantic,” Philip said. “We don't have other options on the coast here.”

According to the advocacy organization Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC, the Sunshine Coast has only enough spots for 22 per cent of eligible children to access child care.

Part of the issue, Philip said, is that the Sunshine Coast can’t seem to attract enough qualified and licensed workers to staff child-care programs.

The cost of living on the Sunshine Coast is high, with the living wage for the region rising to $26.42 per hour last year, according to Living Wage BC, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Sunshine Coast Foundation.

Child-care workers are paid just above that wage, which is the minimum hourly wage that two full-time adults would need to support the basic expenses of a family of four.

An early childhood educator job posting for the West Sechelt YMCA shows the centre offers $29.20 per hour.

That’s clearly not enough to attract qualified child-care workers to the Sunshine Coast, Philip said.

“We rely on these people to look after our children, who are one of the most precious parts of our community,” Philip said. “I don't believe paying them a secondary wage is the right way to show our appreciation.”

The YMCA’s Mathany said the centre is working with the province to find solutions and posted listings for the now-vacant child-care jobs to try to recruit qualified workers.

But with reduced access to foreign workers, Mathany said she’s not hopeful.

“We don't think there's a magic bullet at this time,” Mathany said. “But we still have those positions posted, and we'll continue to recruit.”

Many of the workers hired by the YMCA came into Canada through the provincial nominee program, a federal government program that allows provinces to nominate immigrants to address specific labour needs.

In B.C., the provincial government has used the program to address health-care and child-care shortages.

This year, the British Columbia government has a federal allocation of 4,000 nominations through the program. That’s a 50 per cent reduction from 2024's 8,000 nominations, according to the province.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did not respond in time for publication.

According to Lynden and Philip, the lack of child-care access has caused many families to leave the Sunshine Coast.

That’s to be expected, said Sylvia Fuller, a sociologist and labour researcher at the University of British Columbia.

“If your community can't provide critical infrastructure for people, people are going to have to leave,” she said. “It may dissuade people from moving to that community in the first place, just like if there isn't a doctor available and people can't get medical care.”

The reason for the staffing shortage? Bad jobs, according to Fuller.

Work as a childhood educator is often precarious, not well paid and doesn’t offer much career progression, Fuller said. That leads to high burnout and turnover in the child-care sector.

She said bolstering the quality and compensation for work as an early childhood educator would be a much better long-term and stable solution than bringing in foreign workers to fill the gaps.

“Temporary foreign workers are a Band-Aid solution, and it's a solution that is really built on creating more precarious kinds of employment relationships,” she said. “That's the last thing that the sector needs.”

Fuller added the closure highlights how child care is “absolutely critical” in helping parents return to work.

Meanwhile, parents like Lynden and Philip are left looking for any way to get back their access to child care.

Approximately a dozen of the affected families have organized on a WhatsApp group chat and are launching a campaign to raise awareness of their situation.

The parents have drafted letters to the provincial and federal governments asking for help and held a rally outside their MLA Randene Neill’s office.

“The system is broken,” Philip said. “It's been broken for a really long time, and no one's doing anything to help. We are coming to the government, hat in hand, and asking them to do something now, because our personal situation is going to be critical in the next two to four weeks.”