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By Victor Kaisar

Daycare Funding

Kamloops to reassess plans after grant application to build daycare at Parkview Activity Centre denied

May 5, 2025 | 10:52 AM

KAMLOOPS — The City of Kamloops’ plan to build a new daycare at the Parkview Activity Centre near McDonald Park on the north shore has hit a roadblock of sorts.

Acting Social, Housing and Community Development Manager, Natasha Hartson, says they’ve had to temporarily put their plans on hold after the City’s application for provincial funding was denied.

“We did seek feedback from the Province to understand why our application was not successful,” Hartson told CFJC Today. “The message that we heard was that it was a very oversubscribed program and that they had to make some very hard choices and decisions.”

The City applied for funding from the ChildCareBC New Spaces Fund to turn the Parkview Activity Centre into a new daycare. It was one of three smaller projects announced as part of the Build Kamloops initiative.

“We continue to push [with the Province] that we desperately need more childcare spaces. But I think that it goes to the fact that there is a childcare crisis across the province and, quite frankly, across the country,” Hartson added.

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“We will be now seeking direction from council on what our next steps with Parkview will be. Obviously, its an amazing space and so we will wait and see what our direction is on where we go from here.”

Those next steps could include reapplying for grant funding in the future, if and when the ChildCareBC New Spaces Fund is reinstated. Hartson said that will also be a decision for City Council to make.

“There is new funding that we understand will become available but we’re waiting to hear form the province as well on when that will take place,” Hartson said.

For now, the Parkview Activity Centre sits empty as programs were moved over to the new seniors community centre on Cottonwood Ave., which is being operated by the Centre for Seniors Information.

“That is part of the discussion that needs to be had as well,” Hartson said, when asked what could happen to the Parkview building following the unsuccessful grant application.

“I don’t have an exact timeline but what I can say is we’re actively working towards those discussions and we don’t want to sit on Parkview as a property with no plan.”

The City of Kamloops previously got funding from the ChildCareBC New Spaces Fund to build a new 36-space child care facility at Station Plaza downtown. That facility, which is being operated by the YMCA of British Columbia, opened its doors on April 1.

“We are anticipating a grand opening ribbon cutting event in early June,” Hartson said. “We had a soft launch, so kids are there and staff are hired. We are excited that the doors are open.”

Proposed Sagebrush Daycare not funded

CFJC Today has also reached out to the Early Learning Society of Kamloops, which had applied for provincial funding to build a new daycare at 1510 9th Avenue, adjacent to their existing 170-space daycare next door.

The society was also not included in a list of funding recipients announced by the B.C. Government at the end of March.

In February, the City of Kamloops sent a letter to the Province and urged it to fund that daycare, adding it was “at great risk of being permanently lost.”

“These are critical spaces that we need right now,” Councillor Katie Neustaeter told CFJC Today at the time. “Half of them made even more so because they are attached to families who have healthcare providers as parents.”

“We desperately need those people working here in our city.”

A few Kamloops-area organizations got funding for child care projects as listed below:

More $10 a Day ChildCareBC spaces:

North & South Shuswap Community Resource Association, Sorrento
Sorrento Preschool, 20 spaces

Okanagan Boys and Girls Clubs, Vernon
Okanagan Boys and Girls Club-Lakers Club, 36 spaces

Evangelical Free Church of Williams Lake
Maranatha Minis Daycare, 49 spaces

ChildCareBC 2024-25 New Spaces Fund:

Yellowhead Community Services Society, Clearwater
Building Blocks Daycare, 13 spaces

2025-26 Early Learning and Child Care Infrastructure Fund:

Kamloops Aboriginal Friendship Society
Facility name TBD, 33 spaces

Skeetchestn First Nation, Savona
Knucwentwecw, 81 spaces