Council calls on Tories to improve their child-care plan
Kamloops This Week
By GARY MCKENNA
June 16, 2006

Kamloops city council is calling on the federal Conservative government to reinstate the national child-care agreement, signed when the Liberals were in power.

In a unanimous vote, council agreed to lobby the feds through the Union of B.C. Municipalities to bring back the program the Tories scrapped a few months ago.

The Liberal child-care agreement, which was signed by all 10 provinces, would have committed $5 billion over five years to make child care more accessible and to create more spaces.

"Elections aren't usually referendums on one issue," said Mayor Terry Lake, speaking to the fact the Liberals took a beating in the polls in January.

"This is a program that has been agreed upon nationwide."

Laurel Scott of the B.C. Government Employees' Union asked council to throw its support behind her union's campaign.

She said the Conservative plan to give parents $1,200 a year per child under six is detrimental to people on social assistance and single-parent families.

"We have day cares already, where staff have taken wage cuts to keep business going," Scott said.

But local Conservative MP Betty Hinton denied the previous Liberal government ever had a long-term child-care agreement.

"Campaign promises maybe, or rhetoric, but nothing in the budget and nothing that lasted longer than one year," she said.

Hinton said the Conservative government honoured a one-year plan the Liberals had passed in the House of Commons.

The Liberals had a signed agreement in principle with the provinces, which hinged on the party winning re-election in January.

Hinton said her party's plan gives tax incentives to companies that open up child-care spaces for their employees and will create 125,000 spaces in the next five years.

"Our program treats every Canadian family with a child under six equally," Hinton said.

"The Liberal plan did not allow for shift workers, it created no spaces whatsoever and it was only helping 30 per cent of the Canadian population."

But members of city council do not agree with Hinton's assessment of the Conservative child-care plan.

"If you are a single working parent and you don't have childcare, you can't just go on welfare," said Coun. Pat Wallace.

"What do you do with your children - tie them up in the yard?"

Coun. Peter Milobar supported the resolution to lobby the feds to put more money into childcare, but was apprehensive about endorsing the Liberal plan specifically.

He said it was more likely the Conservative government would give into pressures from municipalities if they weren't pushing the exact system the Liberals had proposed.

"I guess a part of it is semantics," he said.

"Don't refer specifically to re-instating the Liberal plan - just ask for $5 billion over five years."

Milobar said that if enough cities signed similar resolutions across the country, pressure on the Conservative government could force them to change their childcare plan.