Winnipeg Free Press

The Manitoba Child Care Association praised the introduction of the Child Care Modernization Act, legislation in Ontario that would tighten the rules around unregulated child care and improving the safety of children. The proposed legislation will also impose severe fines on negligent child care providers and will allow the province to immediately close a facility if it is deemed unsafe.

“Pat Wege, executive director of the Manitoba Child Care Association, said her organization has pressed the provincial government to lead a discussion about unlicensed in-home child care.”

In Manitoba, the law currently in places limits the number of children cared for in home child care to four, including the providers’ children. However, Wege says “it’s not unheard of for there to be "large numbers of children" in such homes.”

Manitoba has 28,580 spaces in child-care centres , 3,054 spaces in licensed home-based child care. There is 188,000 children 0-12 years old, which means tens of thousands of children are being care for in unlicensed facilities.

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