Board opposes changes to child care policy
Victoria News
June 28, 2006
By Andrea Lavigne
EXCERPT

The Greater Victoria School Board added its voice to a wave of discontent rising up in B.C. school districts over the federal government's plan to replace national child care.

A motion to urge the federal government to continue the national child-care program was passed by the board June 19. Several other school boards in the province have endorsed similar motions.

"This is a debate around helping to ensure the highest quality of child care. Research has shown over and over again that if children are in quality child care they are much better prepared for public education," trustee Jim Holland said.

The Conservatives made good on their election promise to scrap the national child-care program and replace it with an income support plan.... "It was a bad political move by the federal government to try to give the money to individual families, who many of them will not spend on children at all but all kinds of other things," trustee John Young said. Greater Victoria caregivers and parents staged a protest against the federal government's changes to child-care policy on the provincial legislature lawn in May.