The latest daycare project to receive money under Nova Scotia’s child-care agreement with Ottawa is getting the largest investment to date.
The provincial government announced Monday it’s giving $2 million to help construct a three-storey building in Beaver Bank that’s destined to be a daycare for as many as 20 infants, 90 toddlers and 84 preschoolers, with a target opening date of December 2026.
“This new location is more than just a centre, it’s a meaningful investment for our children, for our family and the future of the community,” said Mehrad Mohammadkhani, executive director of It Takes a Village Daycare Society.
The non-profit organization already operates two daycares in the Halifax area — one in Clayton Park and one in Hammonds Plains. Mohammadkhani said their combined waitlist has about 1,700 names on it for a total of 154 spaces.
Anticipating high demand
He said the new centre has not yet started accepting applications, but he expects demand to be high. He said there are not many daycares serving the surrounding communities.
“That was the main reason — with the consultation with the [Department of Education and Early Childhood Development] — it’s been decided that this is a good location,” Mohammadkhani told reporters at the construction site Monday.
The project’s total cost is expected to be about $5.2 million, including the $2 million allocated by the province, Mohammadkhani said. The public dollars come from a capital fund for new daycares, which is part of the federal-provincial child-care agreement that also subsidizes daycare fees.
Fees for the new centre in Beaver Bank have not yet been set.
Mohammadkhani said the funding was “the major factor” that made the project possible.
“If it wasn’t [available], we wouldn’t be having this,” he said.
Capital fund running out
Under the federal-provincial child-care deal, Nova Scotia was obliged to create 9,500 new spaces between July 2021 and March 2026. It surpassed that target by nearly 200 spaces, and Education and Early Childhood Education Minister Brendan Maguire has previously said the province will continue pushing for more space creation. But it’s not clear how.
The applications for the capital fund — both minor and major projects — have closed. The province’s online child-care dashboard says that’s “due to a full allocation of available resources.”
Maguire was not at Monday’s announcement. Local MLA Brian Wong said the new spaces coming to his community are an “amazing” development.
“There’s an increasing demand for child-care spaces — we see it, we feel it. And this is an exciting opportunity for parents to have some confidence in the system that they’ll be able to have good quality child care in a good location, close to their homes on an ongoing basis.”
Nova Scotia has been asking Ottawa to top up the child-care agreement to help further reduce daycare fees, which have not yet reached the target of $10 per day, on average.
Liberal MP Braedon Clark represented the federal government at Monday’s announcement, and said he could not speculate about what will happen with that request, but talks are ongoing.
“Nova Scotia has done very well on creating new spaces … a lot of work on compensating [early childhood educators] better,” he said.
“But we do need to keep pushing on that to make sure that we do get to that $10-a-day metric,” Clark added.
According to data provided by the provincial government at the end of 2025, the average daily fee for children attending regulated, subsidized child-care programs in Nova Scotia was about $19 per day, or about $12 a day when factoring in free pre-primary programs.
Mohammadkhani said the new centre in Beaver Bank will need to hire at least 40 early childhood educators. He said his organization has been working with colleges to hire new graduates.
Source: CBC News