Where to begin? I wish I knew the answer to that. I'm going to talk about Spryfield, because this is an example of community mobilization.
The YWCA was a partner with United Way in Action for Neighbourhood Change on local solutions. I think this will highlight some of the policy barriers. In Spryfield we were part of Action for Neighbourhood Change. We heard from the community that they needed child care. Last year, we secured from the province a local child care expansion grant of $1.4 million. It took two years to develop. We secured the funding, and we wanted to build a child care centre. Spryfield has the highest number of low-income single mothers in Nova Scotia, yet it has no licensed child care. So how do you support single mothers in accessing work and school when there's no child care? We saw that as an opportunity. Yet now, when we're on the cusp of developing this child care centre, one of our greatest challenges is making sure that those who need it most can get access to it, because of the way portable subsidies are instituted in our province.
We want to develop a federal poverty reduction strategy that will create meaningful, marked change. We need to look at the alignment of the provincial policies and how that translates on the ground. I know a single mother of four in Spryfield who can't go to work because she doesn't have child care. She's now divorced and doesn't have any support. For her to go to work, she would need to have an income of probably $40,000 a year to pay the child care, because our child care subsidy maxes out at $400 a month. So she doesn't have the ability to go to work. All of those barriers need to be systematically removed.
I think local solutions are best, but they need to be joined with things like non-profit-owned child care. We need subsidies for child care that are linked to the community, not just to the centre. We don't have subsidies for the child care centre in Spryfield. How do you make sure the child care being developed is accessible to those who need it most?