A Regina Sunday school teacher whose home has long been welcome to children has caught the unwelcome attention of the ministry of education..Lori Aebig and her home have drawn children since she became a Christian 20 years ago. She taught Sunday school and volunteered at a church preschool, and began to follow up with a Bible study for children at her home..“I'd had friends that I was walking to church with and I was looking after their kids until the parents got off work. Sometimes I would go hang out at their house and with the kids because their mother was late coming home because she was a single parent,” Aebig said in an interview with the Western Standard..“We do Bible studies with the older kids, then they go off to school. Some younger kids come because some of them are teachers’ [kids] from the school. And I do more worship and dancing and just kind of like what I do in Sunday school with the little kids.”.Aebig, who is a grandmother, said some children who attend do so as their own idea while others are dropped off in-person by a parent, some of whom are divorced..“They just show up at my house to walk with the other children because they're friends. Sometimes the parents literally drop them off at quarter after eight and then the kids leave for 8:30 a.m. to school. So they hang out, and then they go off to school together,” Aebig explained..“Sometimes the kids are there for like 15 minutes. They come because dad dropped them off and mom picks them up. It's switch-over week or that sort of thing.”.On May 23, a program manager from the child care operations branch of the provincial ministry of education paid Aebig a visit and said what she was doing may be in breach of the law..The Child Care Act, 2014 in Section 6(1) states, “No person shall provide child care services to more than eight children at any one time without a licence for a child care centre or a group family child care home.”.Section 6(2) of the Child Care Regulations, 2015, are even more sticky. .“A person who provides child care services in an unlicensed family child care home or a licensed family child care home must ensure that either: (a) not more than five of the attending children are infants, toddlers or preschool children and, of those five only two are infants and toddlers; or.“(b) not more than three of the attending children are infants and toddlers, and, where three of the attending children are infants and toddlers, there are no attending children who are preschool children.”.In an email on May 24, Aebig was given a request to comply..“To avoid operating in contravention of child care legislation, please submit a plan no later than June 2, 2023 to me at the address below indicating how you intend to work towards compliance,” read the email..“Continued operation of your child care service in contravention of legislation may result in a fine as per Section 26 of The Child Care Act, 2014.”.Aebig said she never charges for anything she does, but some have brought snacks or occasionally insist on giving her a donation for her time. She doesn’t think people like her are what inspired the laws and rules being imposed..“I think they have certain regulations because there always has been bad apples in the daycare system, people that looked after children and did it the wrong way and just made a bunch of money off of people,” Aebig said..“I think if a person is doing it friendly kind of way with your neighbours and your friends, it shouldn't concern them if it's not necessarily registered, but not if it's just you're babysitting your friend’s or a neighbour's kid, and then they're coming in for Bible study and are you taking care of them….[Some are] 12 years old and they have cell phones.”.Aebig said she invited her initial contact from the government to see what she did for the children. That didn’t happen, though she did have an in-person meeting with the program head in early June..“Somebody in my neighbourhood might have said there's a lot of kids coming to me. But I told her, there’s no more block parents and everything. Kids come because we've got so many separated families,” Aebig said..Aebig assured the bureaucrat she would limit attendance at her house to eight. However, the government hassle and wary eyes were enough to convince her not to host a vacation Bible school..“There's the five-day club coming up this summer, but I declined that because I didn't want to raise flags of having children come to my house for that club because of them watching, they actually used to watch down the block.”.A spokesperson for the education ministry replied to a Western Standard inquiry to say that the regulations apply to everyone — even the unregulated..“Both regulated and unregulated child care operators must also comply with the overall composition of permissible age groups,” read the email.
