Feds moving backwards on child care
Alaska Highway News
15 Jan 2007
Opinion -- By: Christopher Sun
EXCERPT

Think the cost for day care is expensive already? Well, add an additional $40 and $75 a month to the current cost for the service come July.

The federal Conservative government is keeping their promise to kill the $5 billion child care plan proposed by the previous Liberal government....

Prime Minister Stephen Harper replaced the Liberal's plan, which was modelled after Quebec's $7-a-day day care plan, with his measly $100 a month universal child care benefit.

"We hope families use $40 (or $75) of that $100 to offset what the province used to receive and no longer receives (from the federal government)," said provincial Child Care Minister Linda Reid....

What was the point of that? It probably costs more money in postage and paper to send out those cheques than to give it to the day care providers directly....

So typical, the feds cut something and everybody else is left to pick up the pieces.

Oscare Day Care Centre raised their prices last year to cover a raise in pay for their staff. They will have to hike their rates again.

"The staff at McDonalds make more than our educated people who go to school for years," said Clover Barnes, president of the non-profit child care centre, adding that a lot of the parents using her centre can barely afford child care as it is. "If you have two kids it would be $1,100 a month."

Baby Bear Daycare is a for-profit facility, but owner Shirley Oetheimer isn't seeing much left in her bank account. Her daycare is located at the high school so her facility looks after many children of teenage moms. She doesn't know what she's going to do when the cut comes into effect.

"I'm going to be out $75 for each student," Oetheimer said. "I spend the extra money there is at the end of the year for equipment, toys and program enhancement. There is no 'for-profit' in what I do."

But that's not the only sting from the cut.

B.C.'s 44 Child Care Resource and Referral Centres are also affected as they watch their budget get chopped from $14 million to $3 million.

What do these centres do? First they provide a referral service to those looking for daycare space.

They also handle licensing of child care workers, help new daycares start up, help parents apply for subsidized child care, provide workshops and operate the toy- lending library. The toy-lending library is to help child care facilities, as profit margins are slim or non-existent.

Success by Six coordinator Lynn Locher said child care services and support was actually looking up, at a stage where it was starting to benefit the young and families most. The cut means turning the clock back.

At a time when the federal government has been consistently recording budget surpluses in the billions, it's puzzling how they would do this considering this is what people need and want.

B.C.'s Child Care Minister was optimistic that something can be done about the cuts, as there is a new federal minister in charge of this portfolio and with the chance of a federal election.

The federal Conservatives are very proud of the promises they have been keeping. But some of them, including what they are doing now with child care, are good ones to break. More emphasis is needed in making child care spaces and bringing prices down, not giving families $1,200 a year and cutting everything else.

After all, that $1,200 only pays for one month of child care for two kids.

That is, if you're lucky enough to find child care.