Acadia University and the province are partnering to open a new early learning and child-care centre in Wolfville, N.S., that will create 104 spaces for infants, toddlers and preschoolers.
Jeff Hennessy, president of the university, said in an interview Monday that the province will build the facility on land on the south side of the campus. Once it is completed, the university will put out bids for operators to manage the centre.
Hennessy said the project is in its early stages, but he hopes the centre will open by the fall of 2026 or sometime in 2027.
“The university has been growing with a lot of young families moving into the region and child care has been a real source of stress for a lot of young families,” he said. “This is a really welcomed announcement for us.”
Parents in Nova Scotia face significant challenges finding child care, often encountering long waitlists. That sometimes affects parents’ ability to work, as a 2023 Statistics Canada report revealed that 4.9 per cent of parents with young children delayed returning to work due to a lack of available child care.
The centre’s construction is being funded through the Canada-Nova Scotia Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement to create more child-care spaces in the province.
Since 2021, more than 7,300 new spaces have been announced across Nova Scotia. The province is required to hit 9,500 new spaces by March 2026.
Hennessy said people have been asking for decades for child-care services on campus.
“It was just much more difficult to try to conceive of doing on our own,” he said. “So when we got this opportunity to partner with the government, it just made it so much easier for us to be able to do this.”
He said active members of the university, like faculty, administrators and students, will get priority when enrolling their children.
Extra 5 years to agreements
In a news release announcing the centre, the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development also said that Nova Scotia has signed a five-year extension to the federal-provincial child-care agreement and a previously existing agreement, worth more than $1 billion total.
The extended agreements, in place until March 31, 2031, ensure “continued funding to sustain and build upon the transformative progress to date,” the release said.
