Not enough!
Creston Valley Advance / Grand Forks Gazette
07 Sep 2006

Cash and kids - the two don't seem to go together in the Boundary region as new legislation has experts worried that meeting monthly bills will be just a little bit harder for families in the area.

Louise Heck, program coordinator for the Boundary Child Care Resource and Referral (CCRR), says childcare reform funding promised by the federal Liberals has now been rescinded, true to campaign promises, by the Conservative Harper government.

In its place, monthly payments of $100 a month are slated to go out to families with children under six years of age - but Heck says the equation is not quite as simple as it looks at first blush.

"That's $1,200 a year -- and it's taxable income that will alteryour G.S.T. rebate and Child Tax Benefit calculations, not to mention subsidies or medical claims that are calculated based on income, and so on," she says. The people closest to the brink economically will likely be hardest hit, she says.

"And what about children six years old and over? Are we just going to send them home alone?" asks Heck. "The federal/provincial agreements that we lost laid the foundation for a childcare system -- $100 a month per child isn't going to build a system.