Is the goal profit or children's needs?
Georgia Straight
12-Oct-2006
Letters: Jamie Nicholls, Vancouver

I find it unfortunate that child-care provider Natacha Beim is attacking a system that is already beleaguered. Her statements in Pieta Woolley's article "Daycare stalled in city" [Oct. 5-12] contain inaccuracies.

It is the province of British Columbia's child-care licensing regulations that state that the licensee must provide an outdoor play area that is large enough to provide seven square metres of play area for each child.

Therefore, the roof to which Ms. Beim wishes to send the children must be at least 700 square metres or she will not meet licensing regulations.

The city is merely operating under the law of the province, which governs daycare. Ms. Beim would have us believe that zoning forbids rooftop play spaces; it does not. Many licensed child-care centres in Vancouver have had their outdoor play areas on rooftops for years. What Ms. Beim is really fighting is the child-space ratio that is written into regulations.

I am glad that the city of Vancouver's licensing officers are putting the needs of children first rather than those of for-profit enterprises that wish to erode protections that have been in place since the 1960s. B.C. is the most generous province in terms of its outdoor space-to-child ratio. Let's expand on that rather than shrink from our responsibilities to children.