The new Cormorant day care, run by the Kitimat Child Development Centre (CDC) is officially open.

And minister of state for Child Care, Linda Reid, was on hand for the ribbon cutting ceremony.

The child care facility provides service for children from zero-three years and three-five years.

It can handle up to eight infants and up to 15 in the older age group.

CDC executive director Margaret Warcup said the infant spots side filled up very quickly and there is now a waiting list.

There is still room to register older children, but Warcup said that slow start is just fine, giving the facility some adjustment time.

CDC board president Jo Ann Hildebrandt was also delighted with the new centre. “I’m ecstatic about the opportunity to be here today, to have Linda Reid with us, to open our new day care centre in Kitimat,” she said .

“We worked really hard to get where we are.”

The ceremony followed an hour long round-table between the minister and members of the public where various concerns and questions were put to the Reid.

“They provided me with a great deal of issues they wanted to canvass,” she said afterward. “In about an hour an a half we got all the issues covered that they wanted to discuss.”

Those issues included what happens if the province chooses to go with a three-year and four-year-old kindergarten program and how the ministry supports community partnerships.

Reid noted that a lot of the items requested had already been accomplished, such as tuition reimbursements for speech-language pathologists, currently offered at the University of BC.

“This is a plea for folks who might be considering speech-language as a career,” said Reid. “If you do choose to practise in an under-served community, we will pay a third of your tuition costs each year for three years, in fact pay down your tuition costs completely if you stay in the same place and provide speech-language services to [BC] families.”