The province is giving the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows school district $3.4 million to provide 352 new licenced child-care spaces.
It is part of an overall funding announcement that will provide a total of 470 new child-care spaces after a $4 million investment through the province’s Child Care Major Capital Funding Program.
Through this investment, Maple Ridge will receive 350 new spaces through School District No. 42 ($3.015 million, 308 spaces) and Creative Cove Holistic Childcare Centre Inc. ($84,867, 42 spaces).
Pitt Meadows will receive 120 new spaces through School District No. 42 ($419,225, 44 spaces), Canyon Springs Montessori Academy ($250,000, 56 spaces), and Hundred Languages Child Care ($250,000, 20 spaces).
Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows MLA Lisa Beare and Maple Ridge-Mission MLA Bob D’Eith made the announcement on Monday.
“I’m so pleased that 470 new child-care spaces will be coming to Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows. I hear over and over again how difficult it is to access affordable, quality child-care in our community,” said Beare.
“For the past 16 years, the child-care crisis in B.C. has been getting worse, not better. Our government believes that every family deserves access to affordable, quality child-care,” said D’Eith.
“These new spaces in our community will make a difference for the many local families I’ve heard from who have been struggling with child-care.”
This investment will allow child-care providers to:
• build a new child-care facility, including the cost of buying land or a building;
• purchase and assemble a modular building and develop a site;
• renovate an existing building;
• buy eligible equipment, playground equipment and furnishings.
The province is working with child-care providers to sign project agreements that include the specific requirements that providers have identified for each site, such as the need to lease or buy property, obtain local zoning permits and hire contractors to renovate the sites.
• For more information visit gov.bc.ca/childcare.