EXCERPTS
With a further drop in day-care fees in October, P.E.I. is on its way to $10-a-day childcare as planned, says the provincial director of early childhood development.
P.E.I. signed a deal with Ottawa last July to provide day care at that cost by the end of 2024.
"We are absolutely on track to meet our targets and believe that we will be," director Doreen Gillis told Island Morning host Laura Chapin.
P.E.I.'s path to $10-daycare is among the most aggressive in the country. Part of the plan signed onto by the province is for fees to be cut in half by the end of this year.
The October decrease will drop average fees to $20 a day. Fees last July were averaging just over $30 a day.
Gillis said October's decrease will drop fees by an average of 50 per cent.
"We look at a variety of different things when we start to determine that average 50-per-cent-reduction. And so, child daycare subsidy is available for families," she said.
"There are some families that pay zero for their childcare costs and other families that will be paying a maximum of $20."
The province is also moving to increase the number of spaces, she said, as about 1,500 children are waiting for spaces.
The province has extended invitations to seven facilities to become designated early childhood education centres, and it is also looking at where spaces in existing centres can be added and are needed.