Temporary foreign workers ineligible for childcare assistance
As a major tourist destination, Jasper lives and dies by the tourism trade, as well as the hospitality industry that supports it.
And that industry requires a lot of workers to sustain itself; workers that Jasper’s small population could never fully supply.
Thanks to temporary foreign workers, those spaces are mostly filled. Temporary foreign workers are an integral part of Jasper’s economy and community, but according to some, they are getting the shaft.
Lynda Shore is an outreach worker with Community Outreach Services.
She said many of Jasper’s temporary foreign workers and their families are struggling to put their children through day care, because they don’t qualify for the childcare subsidies available through Alberta Human Services.
Childcare can be a significant cost; Jasper’s Wildflower Childcare charges more than $1,000 a month for infants, for example.
Shore said that the subsidies available to permanent residents can cover more than 60 per cent of daycare costs for infants—that amount is then scaled down as children get older and parents’ salaries go up.
Shore said she could only comment on what she sees herself, but she estimates that as many as 20 families in Jasper need the childcare subsidy and can’t get it.
She pointed out that that’s “a huge amount” when you consider there are less than 40 families currently using the daycare in town.
“It’s a real struggle,” said Ashley Havlin, acting manager of childcare services at Wildflower. “[Temporary foreign workers] are trying to come to our community and make a difference and we’re not giving back to them.”
Shore said she and others at Community Outreach Services are doing what they can to help these families, but as a not-for-profit organization, they simply don’t have the funds available to help everyone.
“I’d love to be able to pay those daycare fees if we could—but we can’t,” she said.
Right now, Shore said it is her office that is on the front lines dealing with the “crisis,” but any help they can give is only sporadic and doesn’t come close to providing a sustainable solution.
Shore said that in a perfect world, the problem could easily be fixed if the government changed its policy to allow temporary foreign workers to qualify for childcare subsidies.
Cathy Ducharme is a spokesperson for Alberta Human Services. The organization was unaware that temporary foreign workers were struggling with childcare in Jasper, but Ducharme said Human Services has consulted with parents about their childcare needs through the Together We Raise Tomorrow initiative.
“We understand childcare is an issue for some parents—and that includes temporary foreign workers—and we’re currently looking at sustainable options that will allow us to still live within our means,” she said.
Ducharme said right now temporary foreign workers don’t qualify for the subsidies, and that “we need to work within our current policy” when considering childcare subsidies.
In order for the policy to change, it would need to go through “some discussions,” and “budget implications would have to be considered,” she said.
Shore said that since change from the government seems unlikely right now, the responsibility falls on the community of Jasper to find some solutions.
“We need to get together and realize that [in] Jasper it is necessary to have people coming in to work as temporary foreign workers, and we need to make sure there are supports in place,” she said.
And considering she has only noticed the problem getting worse since recent changes to the temporary foreign worker program came into effect, Shore hopes something will happen soon.
“I don’t know what the solution is, I just know I’ll keep yelling about it,” she said.
Trevor Nichols
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