Premiere Danielle Smith announced on September 15, that the families of children affected by Alberta’s largest ever E. coli outbreak would be receiving one-time support payments.

The Alberta Government has promised to pay $2,000 for each child that was affected by the outbreak, and was attending one of the child care facilities closed during the outbreak.

“Our goal is to get the money to the parents as quickly as we can. We will be sending information on how to apply for assistance shortly,” said Smith.

“While Alberta’s government is providing this financial support, we expect that these childcare facilities recognize the hardship that has been caused and reimburse families the fees for the days that children have been spent out of care.”

She said that the province would continue to work with the families to find child care spaces in other facilities for families that want new placements.

Smith said the payments would follow the model of those given to other Albertans who have experienced provincial disasters, such as the recent wildfires during this year.

“In this circumstance, it’s really quite extraordinary that you’ve got a number of families who are still not able to have their children return. It’s disrupting the family of income.”

“We wanted to make sure that if there were additional financial pressures, that we could give a compassionate payment to assist them with that.”

She said, however, that the it was the responsibility of daycare operators to deliver services, and if they are not delivering service, than refunds are issued.

“This is unprecedented. I can’t think of another circumstance where we have seen this many cases stemming from a single incident like this. And when extraordinary emergencies occur, we have the latitude to make these kinds of decisions.”