No matter if government chooses to focus on resource sector development, a green economy or skills development, or all three – a prosperous British Columbia requires strong labour force participation and parents of young children need access to affordable, quality child care if they are to be part of that prosperity.
The Current Child Care Crisis
BC families face a crisis in accessing quality, affordable child care. Fees are too high, wait lists are too long and the wages of early childhood educators are too low.
BC still has no plan to ensure young children have access to quality care, and no plan to respond to United Nations recommendations calling for greater government investment in child care. The BC government’s strategy to spend $146 million on a $55/month tax benefit is not going to help parents with their child care crisis.
The Solution is Here
Supporters of the $10/day Child Care Plan represent more than 1.6 million British Columbians; municipalities, school boards, parents, grandparents, labour and business, academics and community organizations who all see the $10/day Plan as a solution to BC’s current child care crisis.
When government puts the Plan in place, child care will cost families $10 a day for a full-time program, $7 a day for part-time, with no fee for families with annual incomes under $40,000. Every young child will have the right to participate in quality early care and learning programs that meet their needs.
With new investments from the province, locally elected school boards will provide early care and learning programs with the operating funds they need to deliver quality programs. Early childhood educators will receive the respect and remuneration they deserve.
See who is already supporting the $10/day Plan at http://www.cccabc.bc.ca/plan/endorse-the-plan/organizational-support/
The plan complements the costing model established by HELP at UBC. To learn more about this costing model, check out A New Deal for Families.
Implementation
We recommend that government begin to implement the Plan by immediately:
- Committing to the vision of the Plan.
- Moving Child Care out of the Ministry of Children and Family Development and into the Ministry of Education.
- Enacting a new Early Care and Learning Act to provide a stable legislative and regulatory framework for the Plan.
- Implementing a moratorium on public funding to the expansion of commercial child care centres
- Reducing parent fees to $10 a day in licensed infant and toddler spaces. This step recognizes that the current crisis is most acute for infants and toddlers who are over-represented in unregulated care; and
- Working with Boards of Education, child care providers and municipalities to develop plans with targets and timelines for providing early care and learning for all families who wish to use services.
There is a solution to the current child care crisis and the $10/day Plan will effect change for children, their mothers and families and our communities. Our economy and our society will benefit from investment in the early years. Join us at http://www.cccabc.bc.ca/plan/endorse-the-plan/
Sharon Gregson speaks out regularly on the impact of public policy on working families, of government inaction and the needs of women and children. She is a spokeswomen for the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC and has represented British Columbia on the boards of the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, the Child Care Human Resource Sector Council and the Canadian Child Care Federation. She was twice elected as a Trustee to the Vancouver Board of Education, and Chair of their Finance and Legal Committee. She’s a mother of four. Sharon travels the province sharing the $10/day Plan as the solution to the child care crisis in BC
Support the $10/day Child Care Plan for BC….solution to the current child care crisis.
www.cccabc.bc.ca/plan
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