Proposed child care plan not universal
Mission City Record
June 15 2006
By: Stephanie Seaman, Richmond, via e-mail

Editor, The Record:

As an attendee at the "Child Care- Let's Make It Happen" forum in Maple Ridge on May 24, I felt I had to respond to MP Randy Kamp's completely misinformed editorial.

If Mr. Kamp himself had bothered to attend, I am sure that the very tone of his editorial would have had to be markedly different.

Not one of the panelists disputed the fact that parents are the experts when it comes to their children, nor did they argue against fair and equitable income supporting families that help to support them as they raise their children.

But let us be truthful here.

The Conservative government's taxable family allowance and its proposed incentives to create child care spaces do not amount to anything near a Universal Child Care Plan.

While purporting to support working families, the taxable family allowance actually discriminates against families with two working parents.

Spaces may be created (although similar attempts to increase spaces through tax incentives have failed), but where will the sustained funding to continue operating those spaces come from?

Why, from parent fees, of course. Fees which are already beyond the reach of many families now, and which will in no way be alleviated by the less than $100 a month they will receive beginning in July.

And what of children aged six and over? Do they suddenly no longer need child care of any kind?

Further, none of the panelists advocated for a "government run" day care system. Instead the vision of a community-based child care system was discussed.

This would be a system that would include the participation of parents at its very inception, a system that would meet the needs of each community's families, whether rural, urban, shift work or stay-at-home.

If Mr. Kamp truly wants to support the working families of the province of British Columbia, he will ask that his Conservative Government honour the Federal/Provincial agreement which was signed in September of 2005.