Protest targets Tories
Vancouver Island News Group / Saanich News
May 19, 2006
EXCERPT

When it comes to women needing quality, affordable daycare, Jennifer Waters isn't your typical case.

A grandmother in her 50s, Waters is trying to balance her full-time job as a nurse's aide with the responsibility of caring for her four-year-old grandson, Jarod.

Since she works 3-11 p.m., regular daytime child care isn't an option.

Nor is out-of-home evening care that would disrupt Jarod's sleep patterns and make learning more difficult when he starts Kindergarten in the fall.

"I don't want a babysitter. I want someone who can give him the care he needs and deserves," Waters said. "I need it for September and I hear it's going to be a real trick to find someone."

Waters was among as many as 200 people - predominantly mothers and daycare providers - from across Vancouver Island who gathered on the lawn of the provincial legislature Tuesday to demand access to "high quality, affordable daycare."

Tuesday's protest took aim at recent federal child-care policy changes, most notably Prime Minister Stephen Harper's move to scrap the multi-billion dollar national child-care program devised by his predecessor and replace it with $100-a-month payments to parents of children aged six and under.

"The Harper plan is no plan at all," B.C. Federation of Labour secretary-treasurer Angela Schira told the crowd. "It's about eliminating the right for women to choose quality child care for their children."

The national child-care program, promised during the dying weeks of Paul Martin's minority Liberal regime, was applauded by parents and daycare providers from coast to coast. Harper kept his campaign promise to scrap the program, although extra funding allocated by the Liberals will remain in place until March 31, 2007.

Some in the crowd on Tuesday worried that the Tories will cut existing subsidies, leaving them with less daycare support than they had despite the $100-a-month grant per child included in last month's federal budget.

"I'm skeptical - very skeptical," Waters said.

While the demonstrators mainly targeted Canada's fledgling Tory government, Enid Elliot, chair of the Greater Victoria Regional Child Care Council, said the BC Liberals have to shoulder some of the blame.

"In Quebec, Manitoba, Ontario and Saskatchewan all spoke up quite quickly and put some pressure on the feds to maintain these agreements," Elliot said. "Our (B.C.) government has really been quite silent on that."

Others at Tuesday's protest said the national child-care program would have helped address Canada's chronic shortage of daycare spaces. Bound up with that issue is a serious shortage of child-care workers brought on by the low pay and high stress typical of many private facilities....