MP advances child care bill
By Brennan Clarke
Victoria News
Nov 29 2006

EXCERPT

Little Finnegan Awai is less than a year old and already he's feeling the pinch of Canada's growing child-care shortage.

"I'd say we're on about 10 wait lists, and I signed up for the majority of those as soon as Finnegan was born," his mother Jane Worton said last week. "We're moving up on some of the wait lists, but the closest we've come is No. 12, which means that if a space comes available, 11 other people will have a crack at it before us."

Worton was among more than a dozen moms, dads, infants and toddlers who gathered at Victoria MP Denise Savoie's constituency office last Wednesday to watch Parliament vote on second reading of Savoie's private member's bill, the Early Learning and Child Care Act.

Also known as Bill C-303, the act is aimed at increasing federal day care funding and creating affordable child care spaces for parents across the country. With widespread support from the Savoie's fellow NDPers, along with opposition Liberals and Bloc Quebecois members, the bill passed by a margin of 144-115.

It's rare for private members' bills to survive a vote in Parliament but even more unusual for them to receive Royal assent from the sitting government. Savoie said following the vote that the Conservatives "will be held accountable" if they to refuse to enshrine Bill C-303 in law.

"This is not the pet project of a few MPs. It really reflects a need across Canada. We have heard from so many parents you would not believe it," she said.

Bill C-303, which now moves to committee for detailed examination by MPs, would require the government to spend about $1.2 billion a year over the next 10 years, Savoie said.

For Worton and her young family, it's not a question of government subsidies, but rather the reality that there simply aren't enough daycare spaces.

"We both have jobs, so we can afford to pay for daycare if we can just find the space," she said. "But it's just not an option for one of us to stay home."

Sarah Webb, who watched the vote with her three-month-old son Quinn, started signing up for wait lists when Quinn was just five days old.

One day care informed her no spaces will be available until 2008. Another had a wait list of 185 people and said no more names will be added to the list until June, 2007.

"If I got a space in June I'd pay two months of child care just to keep the space for my son, and that's a lot of money for me," Webb said.

"We're on five wait lists and two toddlers lists... we regularly call and update but we haven't found anything yet."

In spirit at least, C-303 is an attempt to revive the $5-billion national child care program .... However, Linda Reid, B.C.'s Minister of State for Child Care, said the federal government has yet to commit any operating funds for the new spaces.

"We are waiting on the federal government in terms of its spaces initiative," Reid said. "In terms of what, if any allocation B.C. will receive under that formula, we don't know. There has also not been any discussion to date as to the federal government participating in the operation (funding) of these seats."