Taxation and better use of resources keys to daycare
Letters
Georgia Straight
By: Elspeth Nicholson, North Vancouver
25 May 2006

I'd like to thank Pieta Woolley for the excellent article "Daycare dilemma" [May 18-25]. I am the centre supervisor of Pooh Corner Daycare, a licensed group daycare in the West End. We're one of the centres with a hopelessly long wait list. We added 65 names to our list in January and have only about 20 spaces come available every year. We have a total of 10,000 names on our list and only 36 total spaces. I know this story isn't unique -- it's repeated all over the city.

My latest frustration comes from Minister of State for Childcare Linda Reid's announcement that the provincial government will be creating new daycare spaces. Why bother? In October 2005 we received an increase in our operating funding from Paul Martin. For us, the increase amounts to somewhere between $1,800 and $2,000 per month -- it allows us to make ends meet because (as was mentioned in your article) daycare is not a moneymaking venture. Now Stephen Harper has announced he's taking the increase away, effective March 2007. It's intelligent that they would fund new spaces and take away funding from established centres so that they may close. Brilliant.

I particularly enjoyed the quote from Amy Nelson in your article: "My daycare costs $1,000 a month, so Harper's $1,200 a year is not really going to help. If you're well-off, the money isn't going to matter. If you're poor, it's not really going to help. If you can't find daycare, it's not going to help. And if you stay home, the compensation is not adequate." I guess we could raise our fees by that $100 of taxable money Harper has promised families, but that doesn't seem fair either. It's a lose-lose proposition.