Child-care cuts alarming
Trail Daily Times
07 Feb 2007

Opinion -- By: Larry Gray, Fruitvale

In any society, children must be considered the greatest resource, and so it is with mounting alarm that I receive the news of the latest government assault on the vulnerable children of our province. The January announcement by Linda Reid, B.C. Minister of State for Child Care, of the Liberal's plans to cut child-care programs is an example of a failure to recognize support for children and families as an indisputable societal value.

The planned cuts to licensed group and family services will mean that a significant number of families will be forced to choose non-licensed daycare facilities (if they can even find them), and will threaten the continuation of licensed services. Notwithstanding an almost certain decline in the quality of care for children, there is research to prove that trained, licensed day-care providers make a significant difference in the social, emotional and intellectual growth of children in their care, particularly for vulnerable children who come from language-poor homes.

There seems to be a major disconnect between the premier's avowed goal to make B.C. the most literate jurisdiction in North America by 2010 and this recently announced round of cuts to a sector which already operates on a shoestring budget and major goodwill.

More preschoolers without access to quality, licensed day care will mean more educational costs to provide remedial service for children who may never reach their learning potential. Reduction in child-care support actually works against the premier's own agenda in literacy.

Further, the planned cuts will almost certainly wipe out the Child Care and Resource and Referral (CCRR) centres, such as the service provided in Trail. In a ridiculous waste of taxpayers' dollars, the very same government which, only one year ago, was handing out grants for these centres to expand facilities and services, is now closing them down and picking up committed, locked-in costs for leases and equipment that the centres had acquired with Minister Reid's encouragement. What a waste, what poor planning!

While the government will still provide regulated licensing for child-care services, there is no plan in place to provide the ongoing training and material support to the licensed day cares.

Quality of service is certain to suffer. One cannot have regulation without continuing support.

In shutting down these CCRR centres, too, the government is denying parents information about the services that are available, an especially bad move for those families who do not have the means or resources to search out the best and safest childcare options for their children.

The cuts to child-care operating funds come at a time when there already is a dire need for more, not fewer, trained and licensed service providers. In the West Kootenay alone, there are 294 children on the waiting list for licensed child care. Ten out of 16 centres have a waiting list of up to two years.

We need to create more licensed centres, and more sources for parents to make the good decisions for their children and the future of our province.

As a society, we need to ensure that children are protected, and that they are given the chance to develop their potential for the benefit of a literate and socially responsible democracy. At a time when we pay poverty wages to trained child-care providers, and then devalue their contribution even further through shortsighted and callous decisions such as this, it is time for all of us who care about the future of this province to stand up and be counted. We must voice our support for child care as a priority, not a mean-spirited and ill-advised means for cutting budgets in a time when the province is running record surpluses.

We need an increase in child-care services and support, not cuts. I urge readers to write Minister Linda Reid to protest and to demand a reconsideration of this important issue which can have such a harmful short- and long-term effect on the future of our province.