GERALDTON — Municipally-run daycares in many northern communities continue to struggle recruiting enough staff, Greenstone’s CAO says.
A report from the municipality says its daycare in Geraldton now only has two full-time early childhood educators and there are two full-time vacancies for non-registered ECE staff.
“This staffing challenge impacts the daycare’s ability to operate all programs,” the report reads, adding that includes for toddlers, preschoolers and school-age children. “There will be impacts to service in either childcare or EarlyON services (free drop-in programs) or both if staff are not recruited.”
In Longlac, the municipally-run childcare centre is short one full-time ECE due to a leave, which it has been unable to fill, the report says, adding that required vulnerable sector checks for prospective workers can take over three months.
“This impacts our ability to recruit and onboard new staff in a timely manner,” according to the report.
Council is scheduled to receive the report for information at its Nov. 10 meeting.
The problem isn’t isolated to Greenstone, the municipality’s CAO Mark Wright told Newswatch, with many smaller northern communities facing similar struggles.
“This is an issue that’s actually seen across daycares across all of northern Ontario,” he said. “It’s an issue that we’ve seen growing for a few years now.”
Earlier in 2025, administrators in the early childhood education field told Newswatch at a recruitment fair at Confederation College that there are dozens and dozens of job openings in the field and that everyone is recruiting — a stark contrast to the way things were back in the late 1990s when jobs were scarce.
The college has said it’s offering a number of different programming choices to train more ECEs and fill the demand.
Wright said Greenstone offers competitive wages, describing them as “well above the average,” and said it’s important to not only attempt to attract would-be ECEs to Greenstone, but to also recruit from within.
“It comes largely into supply and demand and then the ability to actually attract and recruit people to Greenstone,” he said. “But, also to get people interested, who are from Greenstone, in becoming an ECE.”
“The jobs are certainly there, they are available, and we’d be happy to see more people take the program and express an interest in working for us.”
In Greenstone, Wright said, with the current shortages, administrators are doing everything they can to mitigate service cuts, telling Newswatch that “some of the issues are short term, some are more structural in terms of we just need more employees.”
“In terms of the impacts, we do our best to shift staff over to the daycares to keep the daycares operating — this may impact other programs such as EarlyON,” he said. “And then if that’s not possible, then we have to start looking at limitation or limiting services such as after-school care, but we really do try to minimize those impacts wherever possible.”
“We’ll continue to look at ways of attracting more ECE-qualified candidates to work for us.”
