Letter: Sharon Gregson; Vancouver Sun

Re: Subsidized daycare is noble, but expensive, Letters, June 5

I’m glad to note Michael Edwards agrees with me and over a million other British Columbians that we need an affordable, publicly-funded, quality child care system to support women’s equality and young families. He asks how we will afford it.

The answer is that we make it a priority for government investment – the same way we commit funds to build bridges for long-term safety and the economic impact of reliable transportation routes, the same way the premier plans to invest in LNG extraction, the same way we invest in public schools, health care, libraries, and fire trucks.

We tell our elected politicians that we’ve had enough of the child care crisis and that we don’t want the newly elected Liberals to waste more time and our money, as they’ve suggested they will, on “coordination, collaboration and integration” of child care services which simply don’t exist or are too expensive.

It’s time for substantial new investment to reduce parent fees to $10/ day, to improve educators’ training and wages, and to build more quality spaces for children.

The subsidized child care system in Quebec, according to economists, pays for itself by keeping more mothers in the workforce who then pay taxes.

We would never permit such a shambles for our K-12 system or for post-secondary education, so why do we allow it for our youngest children who require early learning and care?