Day-care providers to protest cutbacks
Kelowna Daily Courier
By Steve MacNaull
February 5, 2007

Saying that there is power in numbers, day-care operators are involving parents and kids in protests against funding cuts.

"On the sixth, we are having Black Tuesday, and all the childcare workers will be wearing black, we'll ask parents to wear a black ribbon and the children will do all their art projects in black," said Kim Chernenkoff, manager of Daycare Connection in Kelowna.

"We'll determine at a Feb. 8 meeting what we'll do on Tuesday, Feb. 13. It's possible that all day-care centres will close that day so day-care workers, parents and kids can march to their MP's or MLA's office to protest."

"We have to send a big, clear message," said Lynn Burgat, executive director of the Kelowna Child Care Society.

"Day-care funding cuts affect the whole community, not just day cares, children and parents. Employers won't be able to find workers if day care is too expensive and takes parents out of the workforce."

The hope is that parents bombard their MP and MLA with calls, letters or e-mails to protest the cuts.

"Child-care centres are saying enough is enough," said Caroline Noga, executive director of The Clubhouse on Sutherland Avenue and at A.S. Matheson School.

"But parents have to stand up, too."

Noga says what will likely spur parents to action is the prospect of day-care fees jumping $150 to $300 a month if cuts to operating grants take effect July 1.

Currently, government funding provides day cares with $14.04 a day per child up to 35 months and $7.48 a day per child from three years old to kindergarten.

That will drop to $10 and $5.48, respectively, squeezing day cares and forcing them to increase fees.

Full-time day care for newborns to three-year-olds averages $750 to $800 a month. For three-year-olds to kindergarten, it averages $550 to $650. Subsidies are available for low-income families.

Day cares maintain they need the government money to provide good care and stay afloat.

Many group day cares are non-profit, and caregivers who have a two-year early childhood education diploma only make an average of $12 an hour.

Funding cuts have happened in waves and will continue to happen unless governments are stopped, say day-care operators.

The Feb. 6 and 13 protest dates were chosen because the Tuesday is the anniversary of Stephen Harper's Conservatives coming to power and is the 13th the anniversary of the federal government cancelling plans for a universal child-care program.

Instead of universal child care, the government opted for a universal child-care benefit for parents of $100 per month per child under six.

With day-care fees likely to increase, parents will have to put that $100 and more into covering the cost.

The government also cancelled capital funding for any new day-care openings and cut federal transfer payments to the provinces for child-care programs.

In B.C.'s case, it represents a $455-million cut over three years, according to Chernenkoff, who is chairwoman of the Kelowna branch of the Early Childhood Educators of B.C.

A few years ago, the government cut the $1-an-hour wage top-up for caregivers.

From 8 to 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, NDP child-care critic Claire Trevena will be at Daycare Connection (at the Lawson Avenue side of the David Lloyd Jones Home) to talk to parents about how they can get actively involved.

Eraly Childhood Education students also plan to demonstrate at the corner of Spall Road and Harvey Avenue on Tuesday, from 7 to 9 a.m. They will move to the corner of KLO Road and Gordon Drive from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and to Gordon and Harvey from 3 to 5 p.m.