Elder Questions Why New Daycare Is Built Far from Peguis First Nation
A new daycare built by a group meant to help Peguis First Nation is opening with 74 spots for children — but it’s not being built in Peguis, where child care is badly needed. Instead, it’s located over 150 km away in East St. Paul, near Winnipeg.
Bruce Sinclair, a Peguis elder, says the decision doesn’t make sense. “Why wouldn’t you build it here, when we need it?” he said.
The daycare was built on land that used to be a golf course. That land was bought in 2021 by the Peguis First Nation Real Estate Trust — a group set up to buy land and make money to benefit Peguis members. They paid $12.3 million for the land, including $10 million from a past land claim settlement.
The trust wanted to build houses and businesses on the land, but the local government blocked the plan due to sewer and infrastructure problems. So, they switched to building a daycare instead.
The daycare was part of a former Manitoba government plan to build over 20 daycares across the province. But now, the new government is reviewing the program to see if it followed rules. Because of concerns, the province stopped funding the Peguis daycare project in late 2024.
Construction is finished, but the daycare hasn’t opened. The builder is still waiting to be paid and has filed a $2.4-million lien (a legal claim for money owed) on the land.
Elder Sinclair is upset that Peguis people don’t benefit from the daycare and that so much money from the settlement is tied up in a project far from the reserve. “It’s not a good deal for Peguis,” he said.
Right now, daycare space on the Peguis reserve is very limited. There’s a three-year wait list for the only daycare, which has just 42 spots. Sinclair’s great-grandchildren were on the waitlist but had to turn down a spot because they didn’t have enough time to prepare.
The daycare in East St. Paul will be operated by Created 4 Me Early Learning Centre, which already has a long waitlist of 500 children in the area. The new daycare will help meet local demand there — not on the Peguis reserve.
A former chair of the Peguis trust says the daycare will bring in money for Peguis in the long run. After 15 years of rent-free use, the building will generate income. But the elder and many Peguis members feel the money should have helped families in their own community instead.
The province says the Peguis council agreed to the project in 2022. But many current leaders and members say they were left in the dark and don’t understand how the trust made its decisions.
Now, the province is reviewing how the daycare project was handled — along with 21 others managed by the same company.
