Tory child care plan 'about choice', says MP: Kamloops politician praises government's child care plan, while caregivers put focus on daycare shortage
The Daily News -- Kamloops
21 Jul 2006
By: Mike Youds

EXCERPT

The first cheques are in the mail representing the Tories' Universal Child Care Plan, but early childhood educators are still wondering about what they see as a greater need...

"Our program is simply a method of helping all families," Hinton said. "It recognizes that it is expensive to raise children and it gives parents equal support."

The plan is not intended to cover the full cost, the MP stressed.

Full-time day care can typically range from $400 to $800 a month, depending on the level of care required.

With the benefit, parents have the option of applying the benefit to licensed day care fees or to their own household budgets in cases of stay-at-home parents and care by extended family members. "I think it's very generous and definitely is needed very much," said Sherry Young, a stay-at-home mother of four young children.

"This is about choice in child care," Hinton said. "It's a very positive thing. I'm very hopeful that Canadians will make the choices that suit them best."

She said Ottawa has received assurances from the provinces that the payments will not be clawed back in taxes.

The Tory plan has been criticized by child care providers and early childhood educators, who say it is a poor substitute for the $5-billion, five-year program introduced by the previous Liberal government late in its mandate.

B.C. is one of three provinces that signed on to that program, which has since been extended to all provinces for a period of one year before it lapses.

Beyond that it is up to the provinces to determine to what extent they subsidize day-care costs, Hinton said.

"Subsidizing the rearing of a child is OK but we do have a problem with paying the full cost on a national basis."

Hinton said child care is a provincial jurisdiction, not a federal responsibility, and therefore the onus is on the provinces.

Vi-Anne Zirnhelt, who chairs the area branch of the Early Childhood Educators of B.C., takes issue with that contention.

"Day care is a responsibility of the federal and provincial governments," Zirnhelt said. "It's a social need."

Child care workers have long pursued a universal subsidy program, believing it would ensure the best outcomes for all children.

"If we don't make it a universal program, there are children falling through the cracks and they don't show up until their school years."

Zirnhelt and other local early childhood educators have been attempting to meet with Hinton to learn more about promised funding of new day care spaces. She was pleased to learn of federal plans to spend $250 million annually, starting next year, to create up to 25,000 new child care spaces annually.

"The problem in Kamloops right now is that there are no spaces available," said Zirnhelt, executive director of Children's Circle Daycare Society.

"In the last two days we've phoned 121 families who don't have day care because we just don't have the spaces available."

Some of those families have moved on, while some parents have decided not to go back to work and others have resorted to unlicensed care -- termed "underground care" by the industry -- she said.

"It's wonderful giving families an additional $100 a month. (But) they've been in power how long and they still haven't come up with the specifics of the actual plan? We need spaces now, not in 2007."

Zirnhelt also questioned a Conservative approach that offers tax credits to employers as an incentive to increase day-care spaces.

A similar program attempted in Ontario failed to create a single space, she said.

"The problem with the $100-a-month program is that more children are going into underground care."

Child care advocates need to know the full details of the Conservative plan, she added.

"That's why, as a group, we're trying to get a meeting with Betty Hinton because we would like to make her aware of the needs in the child care system. We do look forward to meeting with her."