Iqaluit’s only Inuktitut daycare in danger of closing
Federal government will ‘look into’ its financial troubles, says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in House of Commons
Without additional funding, Tumikuluit Saipaaqivik Daycare will only be able to sustain itself for two weeks, says executive director Simiga Lyta. (File photo)
The only Inuktitut daycare in Iqaluit is on the verge of closing because it urgently needs funding, Nunavut MP Lori Idlout said Wednesday in the House of Commons.
Tumikuluit Saipaaqivik Daycare opened 18 years ago as the only childcare facility in Iqaluit talking to “the future young leaders” in Inuktitut and teaching them about Inuit culture, said executive director Simiga Lyta.
It temporarily closed in 2019 because of financial issues and Lyta said she is trying to make sure that will not happen again. However, she only has the budget to continue operations for the next two weeks.
“This will impact the whole community because this is our way of keeping our language and keeping our culture,” she said. “I can’t put into words my stress lately.”
Lyta visited Idlout’s office on May 14 to tell her about these struggles.
She said she’s known Idlout for many years. Having worked in childcare for 24 years, Lyta has taken care of Idlout’s two daughters throughout the course of her career.
There are currently six permanent staff members, including Lyta, who work for the daycare with 20 children enrolled.
Of those six, three are caregivers. In a “perfect world,” the daycare would have six caregivers for this number of kids, said Lyta.
The daycare is mostly funded by the Government of Nunavut. Parents pay $10 a day, with the GN adding $43 per child.
On May 15, the federal government announced $10.9 million in extra funding for Nunavut daycares in addition to $66 million it committed in 2022 as part of the Canada-Nunavut Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement.
But the money is not coming fast enough, said Idlout during her remarks in Parliament.
“The funding is taking too long to make its way to the Tumikuluit Saipaaqivik Daycare. Will Liberals ensure that Tumikuluit does not fall through the cracks and gets the urgent funding it needs to stay open?”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised in his response to “look into this particular case.”
In an interview with Nunatsiaq News, Idlout said she raised the issue because “with it being an Inuktitut daycare, it felt quite compelling.”
The following day, Lyta said, a representative from the office of Families, Children and Social Development Minister Jenna Sudds contacted her.
Lyta is set to meet with a representative from the minister’s office next week.
Stressed but hopeful, Lyta said she is sure Tumikuluit Saipaaqivik Daycare will “pull through one way or another.”
“There is a huge demand for childcare spots in Iqaluit,” said Lyta.
“Since we are the only Inuktitut daycare in Iqaluit, it’s very important that we keep it open, because it helps our language and our future little leaders to keep our language.”
“with it being an Inuktitut daycare, it felt quite compelling.”
Moving right past the fact daycares are a GN responsibility, there is a drastic need for daycare spots for everyone – not just inuktitut speakers.
People leave the territory because daycare is not available. This hurts GN retention and its capacity to deliver services.
Not cheap having them critters.
All daycares should be in Inuktitut. Most important place to acquire the language. In Nunavik even qallunat kids go to Inuktitut daycare
Really? I’d assume that in Nunavik the demand would be for French daycare. Learned something new I guess.
There is no demand for French or English daycare. However some will employ local Qallunat as educators when they can’t fill positions. Common in Kuujjuaq and Puvirnituq .
Oh, I see. That’s too bad.
Does it mean staff are required to know Inuktitut? If so, that is one thing. If not necessary, as with other daycares that are staffed.
I wish luck to all daycares and hope they can all provide Inuktitut being in Nunavut. It is perhaps a staffing difficulty and not just the financing.
so if theres so much demand for inuk day care, that is, theres lots of inuk working full time jobs that require daycare and more staff are needed then why the financial problems. I dont think theres as much demand as indicated. Why? because theres not a lot of inuk working full time that have kids.
If you run the numbers, 20 kids around 20 days per month at $53 per day per child, that works out to revenue of $21,200 per month. If your revenue is strictly divided equally amongst the 6 employees, that’s $3,533/month per staff member.
That’s just simply not a high enough wage in Iqaluit, it’s not even much more than minimum wage. And that doesn’t include all the other expenses that a daycare has.
The Official Languages Act for Nunavut recognizes the Inuit (Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun), English and French languages as the official languages within the territory. Click here for a History of Nunavut’s Language Laws. The Inuit language includes Inuinnaqtun and Inuktitut.
There is greater status and lesser status.
Lori, here we go again. Please do your homework before addressing issues in Parliament that are not true. Just because a want to be executive director cries in your office. Get your facts first Lady, before you keep embarrassing you and Nunavummiut further
What did she miss? Please let us know
This is a sad situation for the only Inuktitut Daycare in Iqaluit. One question I have is why is your daily fee so low? You are possibly around the lowest in town. Daycares were given opportunities to increase parental fees even with the $10 a day subsidy which means the GN would be covering the increase at no cost to parents. Being the only Inuktitut centre in town your daily rate should be the highest for the specific service you are offering. Other than licensing the centres and providing specific funding, the GN is not responsible for the financial aspects of a daycare centre in Nunavut. As long as the centres are in compliance of the Child Care Act and Regulations the GN is not part of a greater equation. All daycares are Non Profit Societies like the Humane Society and others. It is the responsibility of the Board of Directors to oversee the finances are in good standing. There is so much more on the business side to run a daycare than what is known to the general public. At the end of the day is it a business not a babysitting service. The job of the Director is a full time job to keep the business running efficiently, and being short staffed where the Director is needed on the floor with the children makes the workload even more taxing. Daycares pay taxes to both Federal and Territorial Governments etc. One of the main issues with the Inuktitut Daycare unfortunately is being able to keep a Director who can keep up with the funding opportunities that are available. Currently, the daycares are receiving more funding from the GN and other entities than ever before! Early Childhood Educators are finally being recognized for their efforts and their importance through the GN wage scale and now recently the GN is providing each ECE Northern Living allowance on top of the increased wages. Unfortunately it is past troubles that is finally catching up with this centre. I hope the Inuktit Daycare receives the help they are looking for to stay afloat and keep going for years to come. Their Inuktitut program is one of importance this is highly needed.
a couple things – Kakivak does offer funding for parents who are beneficiaries that are working. But the reporting needs to be done properly to access this funding. Kakivak also offers reimbursement for and encourages daycares to hire book keeping services like Nasaijit. They will take care of: payroll, monthly reconciling, payroll tax, cra stuff, and help with reporting, and so much more. I cannot say for sure that this service is available for the Inuktitut Daycare, but I would think it most certainly is. They really should look into this.
They do receive funding for the bookkeeping services
Again and again, Inuktitut is not a priority for the GN, never has been, no Inuktitut curriculum at the department of education and out schools, no support for Inuktitut at all at the GN just a bunch of token support and no real meaningful support.
Transient GN staff that do not understand why Inuktitut should be important in Nunavut and really do not care. Leadership at the GN do not step up to make meaningful change at the GN, the list just keeps going.
20 years from now we will be in a very sorry state with our language, similar to how it is in Alaska and the FN people of southern Canada.
Embarrassing for the GN and Nunavut.
Maybe the parents could take an active role to teach their kids how to speak their language rather than expecting someone else to do it for them, if it is so important. Maybe the parents could look after the kids too and make sure they get to bed at a normal time so they can learn, rather then the kids out all night huffing gas and who knows what else. Maybe its time the parent acted like parents and grow up themselves and stop expecting someone else to do everything for them.
Majority of us do take an active role in teaching our kids our language, your comments show the ignorance and lack of knowledge to what is going on here in Nunavut or maybe you just don’t care.
Kids go to daycare, schools for most of the day, we don’t have proper education in our own language, our only Inuktitut day care is not supported, we don’t have any Inuktitut curriculum or much Inuktitut teaching resources.
It’s a constant fight to have any source of Inuktitut and people like yourself would rather see our language just die and removed from our territory.
How about we take away English from all daycares and the schools and start teaching just in French. Have French everywhere, how would your kids learn English? Would you have a difficult time trying to teach your kids your language at home after working hours?
It’s ridiculous how some people think, decolonization really needs to be educated in our school system across Canada.
It is very hurtful ready this , losing their language.
Do you call your self Inuit , when ask fed,government for money .
I always see your leaders ,using Inuit clothes ,during government meetings.
Poor Inuit elders, they did work so hard to survive,in your land.
Now , they don’t understand, their children , their leaders , grandchildren.
Do you every guys , say” our culture” , and even speak your grandmother tongue.
Our language is so beautiful, only few people in this world have Inuit language.
So many Inuit women have Eskimo tattoos ,now . Which is great , if they still using Inuit language. Inuit parka ,Inuit seal skin vests ,Inuit clothing , those are beautiful, if they can speak inukti.only Inuit can make those things . Our Inuit language is part our culture too.what I’m trying to say is , we are Inuit, no matter where we are. French people , English people fight for thier own language, we should too. Nakgumik .
260K in annual revenue with 6 people on the payroll….
Anyone who’s knows anything about Iqaluit’s job market and cost of living can tell you why they’re having challenges.
It would be tough to attract and retain competent staff with double that budget…nevermind also having to manage the rest of the costs associated with running a day care.
This will be an issue as long our society thinks it’s OK to pay early child educators and care givers minimum wage.
Oof your post begs a few questions. Why is the daycare’s annual revenues so low? And how are the other daycares in Iqaluit in presumably similar financial situations able to make ends meet without threatening to close? The short answer seems to be that the daycare needs to increase the amount it charges the families that use it to keep it in line with the fees charged by other providers in town. They clearly can’t operate solely on the subsides they receive from Kakivak and the GN.
This one is a head scratcher. There are currently 7 (or maybe 8??) licensed daycares operating in Iqaluit, and yet this is the only one that seems to be having serious financial troubles. I think that maybe an internal audit is called for.
All Iqaluit daycares should operate in Inuktitut. English-language daycare is where Inuktitut dies.
With all due respect Mr Harper, where are the educators that can speak, read and write Inuktitut? The last 3 beneficiaries hired for our centre could not do any of those which meant they could not teach the children in Inuktitut. It is hard enough to staff these centres never mind having all the centres using only the Inuktitut language and programming. Almost 98% of the children at out centre have at least 1 Inuk parent in the home and none of those children understand or speak the language. Inuktitut language starts at home. If the parents don’t care enough to teach their children Inuktitut why should it fall on the responsibility of the daycares and schools?! The language is being lost because the parents are not passing it on to their children. So shame on them.
Yeah, good luck with that. You’ve sadly forgotten our Francophone population, a common occurrence in Iqaluit. Language rights in this territory are more than just Inuktitut.
The language of choice for a daycare is a parent’s choice. We have daycares in this city that operate – defacto – in Tagalog and Yoruba. This sort of choice is a good thing for parents and families and is how our country operates.
What? You know that the instructors do not exist. This territory can’t even staff public schools with adequate numbers of trained and competent Inuktitut teachers, but not through lack of trying. These people do not exist.
How are poorly paid and low social status employers like daycares (it is a different conversation why this is so) going to attract Inuktitut speaking staff when someone can walk out the door into a GN job and triple their salary?
100% Amen to that!