Editorial

November 19 2025

Childcare is community care

For all the headlines, photo-ops and funding announcements that wash across this region like a recurring tide, rural communities in Nova Scotia still fight a daily uphill battle to retain the people they have and attract the people they need.

So, when something comes along that isn’t just another ribbon-cutting, but a genuine piece of long-term community infrastructure, it matters.

The new licensed daycare in Canso matters to the families who have struggled for years without formal childcare of any kind. It matters to the working parents. It matters to the young families who might now seriously consider moving back, knowing there’s support for their kids during the day.

Most of all, it matters because it gives a place like Canso something we rarely talk about openly: a real shot at staying power.

This is no one-off. It’s part of a broader provincial and federal strategy to establish licensed, affordable childcare in rural communities where none has existed before. In 2024, Guysborough saw the opening of its own centre under this same program. Now Canso is following suit with an 18-space facility inside Fanning Education Centre/Canso Academy. It will be the first licensed daycare of its kind in that community.

Notably, this is more than a policy win. To make room for the centre, the local fitness facility had to be moved. That relocation, now almost complete, involves a $1.8-million investment in expanded services at the Canso Arena – a double win for the community.

The new childcare space, meanwhile, will be operated by a selected provider following a public request for proposals issued by the Strait Regional Centre for Education. Once selected, the operator will offer full details on registration and programming. As with other facilities funded through the Canada-Nova Scotia Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement, all families who enroll will receive the province’s 50 per cent fee reduction, applied directly to their monthly bills. Lower-income families may also qualify for the provincial Child Care Subsidy Program.

No one is pretending this will solve everything. Rural Nova Scotia still grapples with housing shortages, spotty health care, limited transportation and vanishing storefronts. But none of that changes the fact that childcare is now being recognized – correctly – as economic infrastructure. Like roads. Like broadband. Like power.

Warden Paul Long put it plainly: “Childcare service is a necessity if we are to grow our communities.”

He’s right. For years, rural families have been asked to make do with informal arrangements, strained schedules and second-best solutions. That Canso has had to wait this long for what should be a basic service is telling. That it is finally arriving speaks volumes.

In these pages, we often hear from politicians about what it will take to “revitalize” rural Nova Scotia. More often than not, the answers are vague, the timelines unclear, and the dollars theoretical.

But this week in Canso, something is actually happening. And that’s a good start.