Campaigns

Articles – Federal Election 2011

 

We need a child-care plan that covers the real costs
canada.com
April 15, 2011
By Kelly Connor, City Mom, a blog that follows her adventures raising a daughter in the heart of downtown London, Ont.

Pregnancy should be a blissful time when a mamma-to-be should be resting, eating right and picking out baby names. Not a time for worry and stress. But almost immediately after the good news is shared, it’s on to reserving a spot on your daycare-of-choice waiting list.

Even though this unknown child will not actually attend the chosen centre for another year and nine months, it’s the first thing expectant parents are worrying about, next to a healthy pregnancy.

To what do we owe this worry and need? Is it a lack of daycare space, a deficit of funds, a shortage of professional caregivers, or all the above?

Canada is one of only a few developed nations without a national child-care plan. There is a $100-a-child monthly Universal Child Care Benefit that was put in place to offset the Tories’ elimination of the Liberals’ short-lived $5-billion child-care funding program. However, the problem with this benefit is that it’s taxable and doesn’t come close to covering the real monthly costs of child care.

With more and more women entering the workforce, quality child-care spaces are more important than ever. Only an estimated 20 per cent of children under the age of 6 have access to licensed child-care services, which leaves a whopping 80 per cent without care.

With parents in a frenzy to find stable child-care, unlicensed home daycares are becoming more popular. Unlicensed means unregulated, and studies show that these types of informal child-care options often don’t meet children’s developmental needs, and some even say they can be harmful…

Can we count on our government to protect our children? They are the future of our society and our most valuable resource.

Read online

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Debt by 1,000 tax cuts: An election special
Rabble
By Ellen Russell, research associate with the Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives
April 15, 2011

Stephen Harper knows he can’t come right out and reveal his radical agenda to downsize government. But if he gets his majority, expect Harper to slash and burn on the pretext that the federal debt and deficit requires massive evisceration of government.

Since he welcomes a future fiscal squeeze to justify his small-government agenda ….

Harper is accelerating Canada’s federal debt with his tax-cut vote buying. And that is just fine with him. It will give him all the more reason to cut deeply later. We are going to pay very dearly for these tax cuts if a majority Conservative government guts popular programs on the pretence of a sudden post-election alarm about the federal finances.

Read online

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The Appearance Of Choice: Income splitting just a tax break for high income earners, covered by a crafty political ploy
News & Views
April 7, 2011
By Angela Brunschot

Let’s play alternative history… when Tommy Douglas was fighting to bring in national health care, he buckled under the pressure and instead decided to offer Canadian families a lump sum each month as well as a tax deduction to pay for health care.

Where would that leave you and your family in the present day? Well, if you are in the upper echelons of Canadian income earners, you might be OK. In that case, you’d be taxed enough to get some money back and make enough to save ahead for medical emergencies.

For the vast majority of us on the other side though, our quality of life and overall health would suffer. …

The rhetoric of choice, the idea that one parent should have the option of staying home rather than paying into a national child-care system is deceptively attractive, says Armine Yalnizyan, an economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives….

If Harper really wanted to help “working families” who wanted to have one parent at home, then he would also be talking about living wages. Only when a family can truly live on one wage will parents have a real choice about child care….

So let’s play alternative history again. What if the Conservatives put the money from income splitting, which cost about $2.2 billion in 2007 when it was first studied, into  subsidized child care instead? Where would that leave you and your family?….

But for the vast majority of parents who do work, a child care system, with the government monitoring and increased capacity that entails, that would make a huge difference in the everyday lives of parents and children…..

Those are the benefits of a social program rather than a tax cut. Let’s hope Canadians can see that come May 2.

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The foundation is finally ready to build national child care
Ottawa Citizen
April 7, 2011
By Elizabeth Payne

… Do governments have a role to play in supporting good quality child care? If you believe governments have a role in providing anything beside police, prisons, defence, roads and clean water -and I do -then child care should be high on the list. Without a coherent child care system, families whose children have the greatest need of high quality early childhood education and care are the least likely to get it. Enrichment in the early years, according to experts, is what separates those children who will go on to lead productive lives from those who will struggle. It is good for individuals and good for the economy….

It is time Canadian politics turned the page on this false choice: Canadian parents do not choose whether to work or to raise their children. The vast majority of them do both and would like some help making sure their children can get high quality child care while they are on the job.

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We need a Canada that works for all generations: Investing an additional $22 billion in the standard of living of Canadians is fiscally smart when the payback is huge
Vancouver Sun
April 5, 2011
By Paul Kershaw

There is a silent generational crisis occurring in homes across the country, one we neglect because Canadians are stuck in stale political debates.

The crisis is clear when we consider a simple “Then and Now” story. Picture it: the mid-1970s in Canada. Boomers were moving beyond their sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll phase to start the more serious business of building families, communities and enterprises. The average household income for a young couple in their prime child-rearing years back then was $65,160 a year, after adjusting for inflation and expressing it in current dollars. In the mid-70s, just 54 per cent of young women contributed to household income.

Flash forward to the present, where the corresponding figure is 82 per cent of women, while young men’s employment rate has remained stable. Despite all this extra adult time in the labour market, the average annual household income for a young couple today is $68,300, just slightly higher than it was 35 years earlier.

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Poverty, child care should top political agenda
By Christopher Smith, assistant executive director and Jeff Bisanz, director of the Muttart Foundation, a private charitable foundation in Edmonton whose interests include a focus on early childhood education and care.
Edmonton Journal
March 30, 2011

… As we head to the polls for the fourth time in seven years there are important matters to consider and critical questions to ask of our politicians. At the top of the agenda should be two issues the major political parties have all failed to address despite much rhetoric and promised action: first, the continued tragedy of child and family poverty; and second, the failure to introduce a national child-care strategy….

Child and family poverty has a high price that we all pay. Children who grow up in low income families tend to do worse in school, earn lower incomes as adults and require higher levels of social, health and justice services. The evidence is clear. Child and family poverty hurts us all.

Almost as disconcerting as our collective national failure to address child and family poverty is our persistent fumbling with respect to a national strategy for early childhood education and care. For more than a quarter of a century politicians have made promises on a national child care strategy. Brian Mulroney’s Conservative government first introduced such a notion in the mid-1980s, followed by subsequent Liberal promises and belated actions in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2006, the minority Conservative government finally pulled the plug on a national child-care strategy when it cancelled the bilateral agreements with the provinces to support early learning and care.

Given that the vast majority of young children now spend much of their early years in some form of non-parental care, the absence of national leadership in this area remains mystifying. While almost all of the other developed nations have national funding and delivery strategies in place, Canada, outside of Quebec, remains in an early learning and care limbo. International studies from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and UNICEF reveal Canada’s shameful position at close to the bottom of early childhood education and care rankings with other nations leaving us trailing in their wakes. There are regulated child-care spaces for only one in five children under five, and licensed child care remains unaffordable for many middle-and low-income families….

Profit motive sits uneasily with aims of childcare

Patrick McClure, Ethics Fellow at the Centre for Social Impact, University of NSW

The importance of childcare and early childhood development cannot be overstated. Most of our development as individuals takes place in early childhood.

Research shows that it is from birth to age five that children rapidly develop the foundations on which subsequent development builds.

The increase in working parents in Australia has highlighted the importance of affordable, accessible and quality child-care services. It also raises an ethical dilemma.

Is child care about quality of services that includes higher staff-child ratios and better qualified staff?

Or is child care a corporate business making large profits and returns for investors? Or is it a mix of quality services and profitable business?….

It is a consortium of non-profit organisations with funding from the federal government, non-profit partners, high-net-worth individuals, foundations and a bank loan. One hopes that it will be successful in providing the affordable, accessible and quality care that Australian children deserve.

Read online

Edleun Inc.: aggressive pursuit of profits in Canadian child care

CUPE

Canada’s first big-box child care corporation

Edleun Group Inc. is Canada’s first publicly traded child care corporation, which began trading on the TSX Venture Exchange in May 2010.

Quality, access and financing in for-profit child care have long been a concern in Canadian Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). But until now, most Canadian child care businesses have remained relatively small, privately-owned operations. During the past ten or fifteen years, ECEC in other countries (Australia, the US and the UK) has become dominated by corporate big box child care operations with the capacity for aggressive growth.

These child care operations provide graphic illustrations of issues, which arise when large corporate child care businesses play a dominant role….

What we’ve learned

No jurisdiction in which child care is treated as a private business has a track record of equitable access or high quality while the countries in which early childhood education and care is widely accessible and meets benchmarks for quality are those that have adopted public management, public funding and public/not-for-profit operation as fundamental. Canada can learn much from comparative policy analysis about other jurisdictions’ negative experiences with big-box corporate child care. And there is substantial information about the public, not-for-profit options that benefit children and families, not shareholders.

Read the article in full at:
http://cupe.ca/child-care/edleun-inc-aggressive-pursuit-profits

CUPE committee tackles growth of for-profit child care

The growth of for-profit child care in Canada was the top concern for the National Child Care Working Group. The committee gathered in Ottawa November 22 –24 to examine ways to improve child care across Canada …

Early childhood education workers from across Canada warned that without a public system of early childhood education and care in Canada we won’t meet the needs of children and families.

“We are seeing too much growth in for-profit child care,” said Jamie Kass, co-chair of the committee. “We are very concerned about this trend because from our perspective, there is simply no place for profit making in child care.”…

“We know that quality affordable child care helps ease poverty, enables parents to enter the workforce and gives our children the best start in life, “ said Randi Gurholt-Seary, co-chair of the committee. “The problem is, too many families don’t have access to child care. Waiting lists are long, fees are too high and there is no system to guarantee access quality care.”

Edleun’s New Acquisitions in Alberta

Calgary Herald News Services

Child Care – A fast-growing company that went public in May on the TSX Venture Exchange announced a deal Tuesday to buy three Calgary child care facilities for $2.24 million, ….

The acquisition will add 283 licensed child care spaces to Edleun’s portfolio, increasing its total to 1,851 spaces in 20 centres that have been purchased or are in the process of being purchased. The company raised $40 million through two private placement offerings.

Hiccups in takeover of ABC childcare centres

The Australian

Today, 570 of the failed ABC centres will be transferred to the not-for-profit company GoodStart, a consortium that includes the charities Mission Australia and Brotherhood of St Laurence.

Taxpayers have lent GoodStart $15 million to help it buy the centres, through a seven-year federal government loan.

Childcare Minister Kate Ellis yesterday said the handover would increase the not-for-profit share of the childcare market from just over a quarter of the market to more than a third….

Childcare union the Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union yesterday welcomed the sale as “the end of a long and sad saga for childcare”.

LHMU assistant secretary Sue Lines said the new non-profit owners would be more stable than the listed ABC Learning, which collapsed with $1.6 billion in debts in November 2008, affecting more than 100,000 children and 13,000 workers in 1037 centres.

Read online

Child care is more than a ‘market’

The Canberra Times

The Rudd Government copped some mild criticism last week for dumping its pre-election pledge to build more than 220 child-care centres. …It’s a shame, though, that the politics around Ms Ellis’s announcement was more discussed than the policy itself. …

[Ms Ellis] also argued that after Labor promised the extra centres, the collapse of ABC Learning had reshaped the industry. …

A more likely reason for the decision against building new centres is the changing nature of supply. The child-care sector’s rapid growth has attracted many businesses. An industry once run mostly by community groups is now dominated by private companies, which control three in four centres across Australia. Over time, they have demanded bigger subsidies to keep their fees affordable. It’s likely they have also lobbied against new centres, which would increase competition. Governments have complied, and taxpayers now foot up to half of the cost of child care. It’s a dangerous business model, as any future decision to cut these rebates could cripple exposed providers.

Perhaps it’s time for governments to stop treating child care as just another ”market”, to be guided by regulation and propped up with subsidies. …Child care is no longer a middle-class luxury; it is crucial to society.

This begs the question: should governments approach child care as they do schools? The consensus of educationalists is that early childhood learning experiences have a greater effect on a student’s future than primary or secondary school. Yet the public education system still reflects 20th-century thinking on when formal learning begins. Governments are the main provider of schools in Australia because they believe schooling is too important to be left entirely to the market. In contrast, only 3 per cent of child-care centres are government-owned and managed….

Big-box child care is setting up shop in Canada

Read online

Laurie Monsebraaten, Social Justice Reporter
Toronto Star

Big-box child care is setting up shop in Canada and critics worry it will undermine quality, scuttle chances for a national daycare program and thwart provincial plans for all-day kindergarten.

The new company, Edleun Inc., has “identified a large and growing supply and demand imbalance” and is looking to acquire and develop “high quality” child care and early education centres across Canada, according to documents filed with the TSX.

Edleun already owns a chain of Alberta daycares with links to the failed Australian-based ABC Learning Centres. It has merged with a Montreal capital company and plans to begin trading on the TSX Venture Exchange…..

About 80 per cent of Canadian child care is not-for-profit, with a small number of public centres mostly operated by municipalities. The remaining commercial centres are either owner-operated daycares or small private chains run as community businesses.

A large international body of research has found that for-profit daycare provides lower quality care for young children than non-profit or public programs. Non-profit and public daycare are also more accessible and affordable for parents and more accountable to taxpayers, research shows.

“Once child care becomes a big business traded on the stock exchange, there isn’t even a pretense that it’s being operated for the love of children and families,” [Martha] Friendly said. “The stock exchange isn’t about public services; it’s about profit, pure and simple.”

Edleun Inc
June 4, 2010

According to a media release, Edleun’s goal is to “become the leading educational and child care provider in Canada. The Company’s objectives include the acquisition and improvement of existing child care centres and development of new child care centres across Canada.”

Analysis: Australia – Childcare reformed in wake of ABC collapse

Helen Penn, Nursery World

ABC’s collapse led to changes in Australia

….in the past year there have been some new developments in policy and practice that have put Australia back on the childcare map.

The new Labour government …has paid much more attention to childcare. And the messy collapse of the corporate giant ABC Learning, which was the biggest operator …in Australia, has led to a rethink about the role of government and of the private sector in childcare.

Australia is a federal country. There are six states, each of which has its own constitution, has its own budget, and is in control of its own domestic affairs. There are also two mainland quasi-independent territories.

In terms of childcare there has been relatively little consistency. Levels of provision, requirements for trained staff, curricula, regulation and so on were all dealt with at a state level. ….

The Rudd government has strengthened the mechanisms for sorting out policy at a national level. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) has the job of initiating, developing and monitoring the implementation of policy reforms that are of national significance.

In July 2009 COAG agreed to set up a National Early Childhood Development Strategy. The first part of the strategy, the National Quality Agenda for Early Childhood Education and Care, which applies throughout Australia, was agreed in December 2009. This is intended to create new quality standards, including higher staff-to-children ratios and better trained carers and early childhood teachers, with requirements phased in over the next decade. ….

LEARNING FRAMEWORK

COAG also agreed an early learning framework called Belonging, Being and
Becoming. This framework has five learning outcomes, illustrated by very
practical sets of examples:
– children have a strong sense of identity
– children are connected with and contribute to their world
– children have a strong sense of well-being….

This framework was the result of extensive negotiations with a very wide range of practitioners and academics,….

CORPORATE COLLAPSE

These national developments were given extra urgency by the …collapse of the corporate giant ABC Learning in November 2008, amidst accusations of poor financial management ….

ABC Learning ran over 1,000 centres in Australia, as well as having investments in a number of other countries, including the UK …The ABC share of the Australian market was so substantial that the Government could not let the centres themselves go under – too many nurseries faced closure.

It has taken the receivers over a year to sort through the business and to decide about the future of the nurseries. The government has bailed out well over A$100m to keep the nurseries open ….

Childcare workers and parents lobbied hard to have the nurseries taken under government control. A Senate committee, set up in the wake of the ABC failure, commented on ‘the deficiencies in childcare policy and regulation’ that led to the collapse. It recommended that small-scale or individual independent operators and not-for-profit and community-based organisations should provide services, rather than childcare being left entirely to the market.

As a result, the government has overhauled its regulations, but it has not changed its policy as much as many would like. Before demand-side funding (parent childcare subsidies through the tax system) was introduced, the previous system had been to give grants to community organisations providing childcare. The switch to demand-side funding had led to the growth of the private for-profit market and enabled the growth of ABC Learning. ….

Nurseries sold off

The Australian government continues to support demand-side funding, but it has intervened in the sale of the remaining ABC assets. Of the 1,000 or so ABC nurseries, about one quarter were deemed unviable by the receivers and sold off at peppercorn prices, mainly to non-profit organisations. The remaining 715 nurseries were put up for sale. ….

In the end there were only two …bidders – the private equity company ….and a charitable consortium branded as Good Start. The receivers, unsurprisingly, awarded the bid to Good Start.

The charitable consortium…. has borrowed money and tapped private philanthropists to help fund its bid. The centres will now be run as community-based, low-profit centres to help children from disadvantaged backgrounds, although they will also cater for working parents.

Investors will be paid below-market rates of return on their investments, with the rest of any profits from childcare fees ploughed back into the centres to improve the quality of service.

Can we learn any lessons from these turnabouts in Australian policy? First, in a recession, private for-profit nurseries are vulnerable. Second, corporate firms are problematic, particularly if they have taken on childcare as a speculative investment, because it takes time – and government money – to unravel their affairs if they go bankrupt. Third, even when they get into a mess, corporate firms are unlikely to be repentant. ….

Fair Trade model

One of the ideas being bandied about when I was in Australia recently was the notion of ‘Fair Trade’ nurseries.

Fair Trade goods are now a well-known idea. The Fair Trade movement favours small co-operative producers, who plough the profits back into the business in order to pay a fair wage to the workers rather than have profits extracted for shareholders or owners. …. Fair Trade is also synonymous with high quality and community involvement….

The lesson from Australia is that it has proved too risky, as well as morally repugnant, to make a profit out of children.

Profit-driven child care condemned

Jane Chudleigh, The Courier-Mail

CHILDCARE regulation should be overhauled to remove the profit-driven problems leading to the massive collapse of the ABC Learning empire, a senate committee has found.

A 12-month inquiry into child care tabled in the Senate .. recommended the formation of a new national statutory body as part of an overhaul of the multibillion-dollar industry. The report was damning of the business approach taken by ABC Learning, whose collapse last year sparked the inquiry.

“That an organization catering for up to 25 per cent of the long-day care market should fail so rapidly following its rise to market dominance says as much about the deficiencies in childcare policy and regulation as it does about highly questionable business practices of the company,” the report found.

It recommended small-scale or individual independent operators and not-for-profit and community-based organizations as the best to provide services.

Read this online

ABC Learning in Receivership – 1st Anniversary Today

Media Release: LHMU [Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union]
AAP/ninemsn

Childcare union calls on Government to make this a happy anniversary by stepping in to protect standards at ABC Learning centres

On the first anniversary of ABC Learning going into receivership LHMU, the childcare union, has called on the Federal Government to ensure the remaining centres are sold to a reputable, quality operator.

On 6 November 2008 Receivers McGrathNicol were appointed to Australia’s largest privately owned childcare operator. One year later McGrathNicol are still at the helm of ABC Learning, making this the longest running receivership in Australian corporate history.

Sue Lines, LHMU Assistant National Secretary, says “After the anxiety of the past year, the last thing workers and families need is another ABC taking over the 705 centres the Receivers are selling on behalf of ABC Learning’s creditors, the big banks.

“Recent reports of the interested potential buyers do not alleviate concerns about what lies ahead. Mission Australia is in a consortium with 5 other not-for-profit organisations… and a little-known private equity group, ArcherCapital.

“A stable, reputable and quality operator is the priority for families and workers and it must also be the priority for governments to ensure childcare in Australia is operated in the interests of families and workers.

“This sale process highlights weaknesses in Australia’s childcare licensing regime under which licences to operate childcare centres are issued by state and territory governments. There are no national standards with which potential owners must comply in order to operate a childcare centre. This isn’t good enough.

“Australia’s childcare licensing regime must be strong enough to control and protect quality. It’s not appropriate for the big banks to decide behind closed doors who will control these centres, which represent 15% of Australia’s childcare sector, merely because they are ABC Learning’s major creditors.

“The stakes are too high for the Government to sit back and let the big banks decide short and long term outcomes for families and workers. They must step in now.

“Families value the commitment of the 13,000 childcare workers who have provided professional care and education for young children at ABC Learning centres throughout the past year despite the long, stressful months of uncertainty about the future of the centres and of their jobs.

“It’s time for the Government to again do the right thing by workers and families,” says Sue Lines.

ABC Learning in receivership:

  • Jobs lost: 835
  • Workers currently employed at ABC centres: 13,000
  • Centres on 6/11/08: 1037
  • Centres merged or closed: 82
  • Centres already sold: 250
  • Centres currently on sale: 705
  • Licensed childcare places: 55,000
  • Children currently at ABC centres: 73,000

End is nigh for ABC as final sale looms

Colin Kruger and Vanda Carson, The Age

THE receivers for ABC Learning, acting on behalf of banks owed $1 billion following the childcare operator’s collapse last year, are expected to formally begin the sale of the 715 viable centres as early as this week.

The receivers – lead by Chris Honey of McGrathNicol – have until March 31 to sell the remaining 715 childcare centres or face eviction….

However, the centres are expected to sell for less than $1 billion, and even the banks are not expected to get their money back….

ABC Learning is expected to finally be wound up at that meeting, which would open the way for legal action against the company’s former auditors and company executives, including former chief executive Eddy Groves. There could also be a challenge to the banks’ ranking above all other creditors in the queue for more than $1.6 billion….

More Australian child care centres ‘may close’

Susanna Dunkerley, Brisbane Times

Parents who use childcare centres previously run by ABC Learning should brace for closures, the not-for-profit sector warns.

The nation’s largest childcare provider went into receivership …with debts of more than $1 billion.

… The group representing community providers said the process was rushed and had left many new operators locked into unviable business models.

Australian Community Children’s Services said centres had acquired long-term leases at above market rents, a legacy of the ABC business model.

National convenor Prue Warrilow believes the remaining 720 viable ABC Learning centres are in the same situation.

“We are really concerned that there will see many more ABC centres close because the operators are locked into long-term rents,” she told AAP….

Ms Warrilow, who gave evidence at a hearing on Thursday, said childcare could not be effectively run for profit.

The government needed to look at ways to help boost the non-profit sector to ensure a single player could not dominate the market, she said….

A small world after all for childcare boss Eddy Groves

Natasha Bita, The Australian

EDDY Groves had promised his daughters he would take them to Disneyland for the Easter school holidays.

His travel plans alarmed the corporate watchdog, the Australian Securities & Investments Commission, which this week applied to the Federal Court to freeze the failed childcare entrepreneur’s assets and seize his passport…

The collapse threatened the closure of 1020 childcare centres – one in every five centres in Australia, caring for 120,000 children – and sparked a Senate inquiry into childcare.

Taxpayers have spent $56m to keep failed ABC centres running. More than 70 centres have closed and 220 have been sold to new operators….

Vancouver’s MLA candidates polled on education views

 

“The Advocacy Committee of the Vancouver Board of Education Trustees prepared and distributed a questionnaire to Vancouver candidates running for office in this spring’s provincial election to solicit their views on public education. (Membership in the Advocacy Committee includes trustees, employee groups, parents and students.)”

Question 6:
Poverty is a significant factor influencing a students learning and success ins school. What would you to do to ensure equitable learning outcomes for all Vancouver students?

NDP candidate’s replies to question #6
“Research confirms that quality child care during the early years positively influences children’s health and learning. The BC NDP will build a publicly funded, affordable, accessible and quality child care system across BC. We will start by addressing the crisis in the existing system through enhanced funding. As finances permit we will introduce all day kindergarten for 5 year olds with before and after school care. “

Liberals reply:
Only reference was to “child care subsidies”.

BC Greens: varied replies to this question.
“BC Greens will promote instruction in nutrition and healthy living.”
Another Green candidate mentioned “Guaranteed Annual Income”.

Child-care crisis is a B.C. election issue

Georgia Straight
By Rita Chudnovsky, consultant with the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of B.C.

The provincial election is off and running, and once again families and communities know that childcare should be a high priority for every candidate in every riding.

After eight years of failed policies, ad hoc decisions, and inadequate funding, B.C. childcare is in a crisis. Just ask any young family in your community about their struggle to find affordable, quality care, and you will hear: Parent fees are high and rising.

In urban areas like Vancouver and Victoria, child-care fees can account for 20 percent of families’ total expenses—the second highest cost after housing. A Vancouver family with a four-year-old child in full-time childcare and a seven-year-old child in after-school care will pay at least $982 a month or $11,784 a year for childcare.

A large Vancouve-based child-care provider reports that without a significant increase in provincial funding, next year fees could be as high as $1,000 a month for three- to five-year-old children

But this is not just an urban issue. From 2001 to 2006, annual child-care fees for preschool-aged children in B.C. went up by $672. For school-aged care, the increase was more than $800.

The crisis doesn’t stop there. There still aren’t enough quality spaces.

Wait lists for quality childcare are years long. Only 14 percent of B.C. children under the age of 12 have access to a licensed child-care space. Despite government’s claims that they are creating new spaces, this is only a two percent increase since 2001 and still falls far short of the need.

And, low wages have created a staffing crisis in child care.

A recent survey of B.C.’s early childhood educators reports that almost half of these college-trained professionals earn less than $16 an hour. This includes people with 20 years experience in the field.

The B.C. child-care crisis didn’t fall from the sky. The seeds were planted in 2002 when the newly elected provincial government scrapped the $7-a-day school-aged child-care program that funded 15,000 affordable, quality spaces and cancelled plans to extend funding to care for other age groups.

Then, the government cut $40 million from its own child-care budget. These dollars were only replaced when the federal government transferred funds to B.C. that could only be spent on child care. The reality is that B.C. is spending fewer provincial dollars on childcare than in 2001.

As a result, long-time providers are teetering on the brink of closing their doors because of lack of funding. The tragic irony is that despite demand, not all spaces are filled because parents cannot afford the high fees.

It is children and families who pay the price. Some children have already lost their only chance to get a good early start. In fact, the number of children entering kindergarten who are vulnerable went up in B.C. over the last nine years.

Communities also paid the price as they were unable to attract and keep young families or fill vacant jobs because of the lack of quality, affordable child care.

Rather than implement a plan with targets and timelines for meeting B.C.’s child-care needs, the government held out the promise of all-day kindergarten but backed away because of the cost. Even this stalled initiative ignored the child-care needs of the majority of B.C. families who need full time early care and learning so that they can work.

The good news is that there are solutions. Other developed countries have systems that meet children’s developmental needs and the needs of working families. Shamefully, Canada ranks last amongst developed countries on our investment in child care.

This provincial election is an ideal time to put this issue front and centre on every party’s agenda and to find solutions for B.C.

B.C. families are looking for candidates who are committed to solving the crisis. We are looking for candidates who understand that investment in childcare is an essential part of an economic recovery strategy. It creates jobs for women and men, helps families during stressful times, and promotes healthy child development which reduces costs down the road.

For any enlightened politician, it should be a no-brainer. This election, let’s make sure that it gets done!

BC Association of Social Workers asks hard questions of candidates

 

ISSUES include:

POVERTY; HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS; ENVIRONMENT AND MUNICIPAL INFRASTRUCTURE; HEALTH CARE; SOCIAL SERVICES and ADULT GUARDIANSHIP & SENIORS PLUS:

3. CHILD CARE

What is your party’s specific strategy to improve families’ access to high-quality child care and improve participation rates of women in the labour market?

5. EDUCATION

What steps will you and your government take to

  • improve learning and support services to children and youth with special needs in the school system
  • restore adequate financing to public schools?

6. ABORIGINAL CHILD WELFARE

If you and your party are elected and form government, what will you do to reduce this hugely disproportionate number of aboriginal children and youth in care or custody?

9. WOMEN AND MARGINALIZED GROUPS

If you and your party are elected and form government, what specifically will you and your government do to protect the most vulnerable and marginalized?

Bill 42 – Election Gag Law

 

From February 13 until the provincial election on May 12, 2009 much of the work of the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC will be governed by BC’s Bill 42 – the Election  Amendment Act.

This new provincial law, also known as the ‘Election Gag Law’, defines public communication of commentary on issues that are, or may be associated with, a political party or candidate as ‘election advertising.

Groups like ours are now required to register with Elections BC and report on our  ‘election advertising’ spending.

While we abhor this anti democratic law – we have registered. And … Any Election Advertising on the web site is authorized by the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC, 604-515-5439. Registration # EAS-2009-0024.

You can read more about the requirements of the Act at http://www.elections.bc.ca/index.php/can/adsponsors/

Election Amendment Act BILL 42 — 2008
http://qp.gov.bc.ca/38th4th/1st_read/gov42-1.htm

Any Election Advertising on the web site is authorized by the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC, 604-515-5439. Registration # EAS-2009-0024.

Child Care is an Election Issue

 

On May 12, BC will go to the polls to elect a new government. Our goal is to support you to make child care an election issue in every BC riding. It is your voices telling the stories of your community, your child, your family and your child care program that will make the difference.

In the coming weeks, we will be posting our Election Kit with ideas, tools and materials to use to make child care an issue for all the candidates in your riding.

Until then, here’s how you can get election ready:

  1. Make sure you are on the Provincial Voters List
    (Register at https://eregister.electionsbc.gov.bc.ca/ovr/welcome.aspx)
  2. Make sure everyone you know is on the voter’s list.
  3. Collect the names and contact info for the candidates in your riding.
  4. Make friends with a local journalist. Invite them for coffee, give them some child care background and tell them child care IS an election issue.
  5. Think about creating a small Flying Stroller Squad to show up at every election event in your riding with those wonderful, home made child care signs. (Watch for more on the Squads in our Election Kit)

To make it easy for you to be heard, we will print and mail copies of any Coalition advocacy materials that you want to use in your communities during the election for no cost. Just email us at info@cccabc.bc.ca with the name of the document, the number you need and your address – and they will be on their way.

In the coming weeks, we urge you to join us once again as we rise with strength and determination. Make this election count in your community. Use your creativity, your unique expressions and your skill to get the child care message heard. Our province deserves a quality, community based, affordable and accessible child care SYSTEM.

Together we remain strong!

 

Any Election Advertising on the web site is authorized by the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC, 604-515-5439. Registration # EAS-2009-0024

$6000-a-day profits at ABC childcare centres before axe

The Australian

…children should not be treated like commodities. “It is appalling that an essential service such as childcare has been placed in the same category as shopping for household goods, merely in an attempt to encourage parents to enrol their children back into ABC Learning centres.”

Full article