Three-day provincial payment delay causes daycare crisis

Daycare owner Amanda Worms spent part of her Christmas break scrambling to pay her lease after the province was three days late with a $22,000 fee-reduction payment.

“It’s impossible to run a business this way,” the Okanagan daycare operator said Thursday. “If the government truly wants to move to universal child care, they need to get their act together.”

In April, the province began the child care fee-reduction initiative, which cuts daycare costs by up to $350 a month for each space, depending on the age of the child and the type of child care. The money is paid directly to daycares, which pass the savings along to families. Operators must file the paperwork by the 20th of each month to receive payment by the first day of the next month.

But in both December and January, some payments were delayed by as much as three days, leaving daycare operators in a tough spot.

Worms, who runs two child care centres in Kelowna with 250 spaces, receives about $22,000 from the government each month in lieu of a portion of parent fees. She uses the money to pay the lease on two buildings, three small buses and staffing.

“About $42,000 in expenses come out of my account on the first of the month, not including payroll,” she explained. “In the past, we might have had one or two parents who were late with payment, but now the impact is multiplied.”

Worms said she made her payment application on Dec. 20, ahead of the deadline. When she didn’t see the money near the end of the month, she called the Ministry of Children and Family Development and staff told her the payment would arrive between Dec. 31 and Jan. 4.

Eventually, one of her landlords agreed to wait a few days for her lease payment, while Worms covered the rest with her personal line of credit and help from her parents.

“The government said it was a ‘minor’ delay, but it’s not minor,” she said. “If they’re one day late, it can cost me thousands of dollars.”

It’s not the first time it’s happened. Worms said there have been delays with her last three payments.

In an emailed statement, a ministry spokesperson said “the number of statutory holidays in December resulted in a short delay for some providers.”

The ministry also pledged to do better, saying it would look at ways to improve the payment system to ensure that in “circumstances such as this, funds are available at the start of the month to allow them to pay their staff or other related costs.”