ECE/Pre-Primary: Ensure Pay Equity - Question Period

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minster of Education and Early Childhood Development.

The majority of early childhood educators are women, and their work has long been undervalued. All ECEs in Nova Scotia have the same professional training and credentials, regardless of whether they work in a licensed child care centre or a pre-Primary classroom. However, most early childhood educators working in licensed child care are paid less than their colleagues in pre-Primary classrooms.

Mr. Speaker, given that the government sets both fees and wages in child care, will the minister demonstrate his commitment to pay equity by ensuring that funding is adequate to provide all early childhood educators fair compensation?

HON. ZACH CHURCHILL » : I appreciate the question from the member. I had a really great chat with our early childhood educators who are in the audience today. I think what we need to recognize is that we all want the same thing. We want more families in Nova Scotia to have access to high-quality, regulated child care and the quality services that ECEs provide, and we want higher wages.

To correct the member, the government does not regulate the wages in the private sector or the not-for-profit sector. We do subsidize those wages and we set a wage floor, so there's a minimum wage in that sector. We have doubled the investment in the sector as well - the $70 million a year - close to half of which is intended to ensure that private employers and not-for-profit employers are providing competitive wages.

We also are putting a working group together right now - which I've invited the members in the gallery to join - to look at helping the businesses and not-for-profits work together to have some buying power, to look at pensions, benefits, and other valuable things to having competitive renumeration in the province.

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : It's true that the government sets a wage floor. They also set a fee ceiling, and the impact of that is that centres cannot afford to increase wages under their own steam.

Mr. Speaker, recruitment and retention of qualified early childhood educators has been a long-term challenge. The implementation of pre-Primary has intensified worker shortages and about that fact there is no debate. ECEs working in pre-Primary classrooms have access to affordable health and dental benefits, which are not available to many ECEs working in licensed child care. Extending health and dental benefits to all ECEs is a small step the government could take to recognize the value of the work they do. I spoke to someone this morning who said that even though she does have benefits, she can't use them because the co-pay is too high.

Mr. Speaker, will the minister commit to extending access to affordable health and dental benefits to all early childhood educators?

ZACH CHURCHILL « » : The reason we put a limit on fees is because we want the service to be affordable for families in Nova Scotia. That is exactly why we do it. We've doubled the income threshold to make this affordable for families; households up to $70,000 a year are eligible for subsidy now to attend regulated child care.

We cannot extend government pension and benefits to non-government employees, so that obviously is something we are not able to do for the businesses and not-for-profit child care centres. However, we believe that if they are working together, and we want to facilitate this, they can have some more buying power in that sector to look at those options for their employees.

We think there are opportunities there, and we're going to work with them to make sure that they are doing it because we have a vested interest in that sector. We have a vested interest in early childhood educators. That's why we're creating hundreds of new jobs, and that's why we're investing in competitive wages in Nova Scotia.