'To protect our children': Alberta unveils new bill aimed at child-care sector

This file photo shows children playing and colouring at their child care facility.

The Alberta government is looking to increase oversight of the child-care sector.

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The province tabled the Early Learning and Child Care Amendment Act, 2024 – Bill 25 – on Wednesday.

The bill makes changes to the Public Health Act and Safety Codes Act.

The legislation is guided by recommendations made by a child-care and food-safety review panel established after hundreds of children fell ill last September's during an outbreak of E.coli at Calgary daycares

"We found that Alberta's legislation needed to be strengthened and streamlined to ensure that every child-care operator understands the regulations that apply to them," said Dr. Lynn McMullen, a retired University of Alberta professor.

McMullen sat on the review panel. She believes the most significant change is the clarification of current language around food safety.

"(Existing legislation) wasn't clear on what the expectations were for operators," McMullen said. "One of the recommendations was that (it) gets cleaned up so it's clear to operators what they are responsible for and what they need to do to protect our children."

The new legislation, McMullen explained, will require all facility-based licence holders to follow applicable zoning health and safety regulations – such as measuring and recording food temperature.

"As an expert in food safety, I can't stress enough how important it is to implement this recommendation from the panel," she added.

Other changes in Bill 25 include:

• Allow the province to refuse or revoke a child-care provider's licence;
• Allow the province to close a child-care program or just a part of a program;
• Create an administrative penalty of up to $10,000 per infraction;
• Create an online platform to curate information on child-care providers, including day homes and unlicensed child-care facilities; and
• Create rules to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work in child-care spaces with adult supervision.

Peter Guthrie, minister of infrastructure, introduced Bill 25 on behalf of Matt Jones, minister of jobs, economy and trade. 

Guthrie said the bill aims to make the child-care sector more transparent and to punish "the small number of bad actors."

The new online tool will allow parents to check the certification status, previous non-compliances and stop orders for a provider. It and other changes are expected to come into effect in the spring, while administrative penalties will come into force the following fall.

"To ensure that these changes do not risk a provider's right to fair treatment, they will still have access to an appeals process, just as they do now," Guthrie said.

"No child-care operation is perfect, but perfection is not what the legislation is looking for," said child care director Bernice Taylor. "This legislation is meant to target our system's bad actors, the ones with chronic non-compliance issues – the ones who give child-care providers a bad name and break down the trust in the child-care system as a whole."

Guthrie did not clarify if unlicensed providers would have to follow the same rules as licenced, but that they would be included in the online information platform and would be eligible for administrative penalties.