French daycares on P.E.I. recruiting staff abroad

French daycares on P.E.I. have started recruiting internationally in order to meet the demand for Francophone staff.

The shortage of French speaking staff means about 150 kids are on a wait list to get into one of the province's five French daycare centres, said Robert Maddix of RDE, P.E.I.'sFrancophone economic development council.

"Most [centres] have licenses for capacity to 50. And here, for instance, in Charlottetown, they're just at 38. So they would have room for 12 more. But they need those educators to be allowed to get to their max of 50," he said.

RDE is aiming to help French daycares solve their staffing problems by recruiting overseas.

• French daycares struggling to recruit staff

Anisabelle Kancel is P.E.I.'s first early childhood educator recruited through Destination Canada, a job fair in Europe.

She attended the job fair in 2014, andarrived in Canada in October.

"In France, I really wanted to work [as an] educator, and it was impossible for me," Kancel said, noting there simply weren't enough job opportunities there.

She now has a job at L'lle Enchante daycare in Charlottetown. She is on a two-year working visa, but plans to apply for permanent residency.

Increased focus

RDEhas participated in Destination Canada for several years, recruiting in various sectors. After the success of recruiting Kancel, and the continued demand for more Francophone workers, the group put more of a focus on early childhood education at the 2016 fair.

Maddix said at the fair this year, RDE received more than 30 resumes for early childhood education positions, a big increase over previous years. He's hopeful that several more workers from France and Belgium will come to P.E.I. this year.

Even though Kancel has early-childhood education experience, her qualifications don't transfer. A condition of her employment is that she also take classes at Collge de L'le in order to earn the necessary credentials.

That is one of the issues with international recruiting, Maddix said.

"To do the matching, we need qualifications to be very comparable to what is required here on P.E.I."

Matching qualifications

RDE is researching which early childhood education programs in France and Belgium are most similar to the ones on P.E.I.

Maddix said RDE will then be able to target recruitment efforts toward students from those specific programs. He hopes those staff will have less extra work to do in order to meet local qualification standards once they arrive in Canada.