TANNARA YELLAND
CUP Prairies & Northern Bureau Chief

(CUP) — Ammy Murray entered law school in 2007 with a lot on her plate.

The young mother of two had a husband entering graduate school at the University of Saskatchewan and a three-month-old infant who was too young to qualify for one of the 110 daycare spots on campus.

Faced with the option of having one parent drop out of school for two years to go on parental leave or soldiering through a semester of caring for a child and attending school full time, Murray and her husband chose the latter.

“To get parental leave,” Murray told a crowd at the U of S students’ union childcare rally on Sept. 22, “One parent has to drop out of school for two years: One to qualify for the leave and another to take it.”

This is because parental leave is tied to employment insurance, meaning one must work enough hours to qualify for payment.

Despite the fact that Murray’s youngest had been on a wait list for a childcare spot since before was born, no spot was available by the end of Murray’s first semester of law school. At the U of S, there are only six spots for children under 18 months, and these spots must accommodate the children of students, faculty and administration.

The U of S is not the only university having problems with the availability of childcare.

The situation is typical at universities, where wait lists for childcare regularly stretch into the multiple hundreds and it can take anywhere from one to three years to get a spot. The University of Calgary’s daycare centre has more than 600 children waiting for one of only 182 spots that cater to both students and faculty.

For students in Saskatchewan and Alberta, daycare costs can be prohibitive for struggling parents. During her speech at the rally, Murray said her family’s childcare costs for two children are higher than the cost of a mortgage and two car payments.

The cost of one month of full-time infant care at the U of S is $800. At the University of Alberta, one month of care costs $1,185, while the U of C costs the most, charging $1,250 per month for infant care.

Wait lists at the U of S’ two daycare centres usually have between 300 and 400 children on them and the wait can be as long as three years. Tracy Thrun, a daycare employee of the U of S, said she “can’t imagine” what it would be like for the parents whose children are never granted a space at one of the centres.

“The reality is, some kids never get into our centre,” said Thrun.

The University of Manitoba has only 80 spaces for a student and faculty population that exceeds 28,000. While the U of M has fewer spaces than either the U of S or the U of C, the cost of childcare is significantly lower for Manitoba students. At $18 per day, a month of full-time daycare costs only $360.

Heather Laube, the president of the U of M’s students’ union, says her executive is “always looking at new initiatives that would help students who are parents.” They are currently looking at providing better daycare options at the inner city campus in Winnipeg.

The current U of S students’ union executive has put its focus on childcare, holding a rally that featured Saskatoon’s deputy mayor Darren HIll and Dwain Lingenfelter, the leader of the provincial NDP, as speakers. Union president Chris Stoicheff said his goal is to see the number of spaces increase by between 90 and 180.

At the rally, Lingenfelter stressed his party’s dedication to making Saskatchewan the best province for childcare “in our first term if elected in 2011.” He added that Saskatchewan is currently lingering somewhere in the middle.

Stoicheff cited the U of A and the University of British Columbia as examples of effective child care for the U of S to strive for. UBC has 23 licensed daycare centres on its campus, while the U of A has five.

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image: Pete Yee