Letters- Child care: No action to match promises
Dianne Goldberg, Halfmoon Bay
Coast Reporter
Sept 29, 2006

Editor,

Thank you to school Trustees Silas White and Lori Dixon for speaking up and raising awareness about the latest child care crisis in BC. Thank you to the Trustees for expressing grave concerns to both Prime Minister Harper and Premier Campbell.

Not only will the federal government be canceling the federal provincial agreements affecting child care, as of March 31, 2007, but families in BC are still waiting for a long promised provincial child care plan and a BC budget that reflects the real costs of providing regulated child care programs.

The Ministry of Children and Family Development and the Ministry of Education carried out an extensive community consultation across BC, made a series of recommendations, but months later, no action has followed all those lofty words.

The provincial Minister of State for Child Care was right in thinking that parents needed reassurance about what would happen to the child care subsidy for low income families once the federal Conservative government cancelled the $455 million dollars BC was expecting.

But what Minister Reid refuses to talk about is the long awaited and never released BC child care plan that her government promised many months ago. And where's the action plan from the BC government to sustain the Child Care Operating Funding?

Of course families are not the least bit reassured. We know that without this funding, child care services will be in a state of collapse and many licensed child care programs will have no choices but to raise the monthly user fees to cover their costs or shut their doors.

Why is it that Premier Campbell and his government wax on and on about the importance of early learning and licensed child care that is affordable for families, but when it comes to action to match their words and promises, the silence is deafening.