The mayor for Morris is concerned about the Province's proposed new child-care legislation and the impact it could have on rural Manitoba.

Existing legislation focuses on licensing of child-care centres and home-based child care, which the Province says limits options for families.

Under Bill 47, other early learning and child-care providers would be eligible for licensing, and also seeks to maintain parent fees at their current levels for three more years.

However, Scott Crick says the current funding model is "fundamentally broken."

"By that, I mean that parent fees have not gone up since 2013, so that means now for eight years, (and) good for parents, that it hasn't cost them more to have their child in care but bad for the child-care organization that they haven't had increased sources in revenue. At the same time, there been very limited increases from the Province which has made it very difficult for these centres to operate."

Because of this, Crick says it's become difficult for local centres to offer fair and competitive pay, or even entice people to work in the industry. He adds Bill 47 doesn't include any mention of off-setting the freeze with any additional provincial support.

What this means for rural communities, according to Crick, is much different than it would in larger cities.

"In the city where you have a high density of people, potentially there might be employers or private options which become feasible under that funding model," he explained. "In rural communities, there are limited opportunities, whether its private or employer-sponsored child-care facility, to move in. That local centre, that is the stable and sustainable form of child-care for people who work in our community."

The Mayor says having a strong, robust publicly funded child-care system is critical to the economic health of communities and feels Bill 47 will strip that away.