A report brought to council shows 22 of 24 neighborhoods in Kamloops do not have enough childcare spaces.
It says Brock, by far, has the least amount of licensed childcare spaces compared to kids aged 12 and under, and says Westsyde and Aberdeen are the next highest on the list.
It says downtown and Valleyview are the only neighborhoods with enough childcare spaces compared to kids who need it.
Councillor Dale Bass says she appreciates the report.
“If I were going to start a daycare right now, I’m going to Westsyde or Brock, because I know there’s a lack there. It may help others looking to enter the industry to locate and be successful… It’s obviously an issue that’s close to me, it has been for a long time. I still see an extreme economic value that maybe we’ll have to consider as we’re trying to rebuild our economy in the fall as well.”
Mayor Ken Christian spoke about the report saying there are 3,000 licensed childcare spaces, compared to 12,000 kids who are 12 and younger.
“I don’t want to leave the impression that there were 9,000 of them out in the cold. Because there is a category of license-not-required childcare that’s being provided in the community, plus there is a vast array of family-provided childcare. So grandparents are looking after, parents, aunts, uncles, that kind of thing.”
Council spoke in agreement that more needs to be done to address childcare needs in the community, and the report outlined approaches that the city can take.
Councillor Mike O’Reilly says the city hadn’t had a study on childcare like this in a very long time, and he says the report needed input from a key department of city staff.
“I did note that development services didn’t sign off on this. There’s a lot to do in here about process and variances, rezoning. And I would think we need to have strong concurrence from our planning and engineering department. And I would like to see that before this comes back to us.”
The report was done after the city received a $25,000 provincial grant last year to do it, and the data is from June of 2019.
