Forum draws a crowd
Burnaby Now
March 10, 2007
By: Christina Myers

A frustrated audience member asked a panel of speakers at a child-care forum on Thursday night how much earlier a parent could begin searching for child care and still have no success.

"Is it conceivable we could get to the point where we have to register our ovaries and our eggs?" she asked.

"We would be able to afford child care - if we could get it," she told the crowd, noting that she and her partner have had no luck in finding quality care for their infant daughter, despite their ability to pay, and they must soon return to work.

"What can I do? What can my friends do? What can we do to change this?" she asked.

The forum, organized by the Early Childhood Development Committees of Burnaby, Tri-Cities and New Westminster, drew an audience of about 200 to the Justice Institute in New Westminster to hear from a panel of speakers on child-care funding cuts and proposals for improving access to child care.

Several other parents got up during the question-and-answer period to say they had either already been forced to leave good jobs or could be forced to do so soon due to a lack of access and rising fees.

Panel member Rita Chudnovsky, a longtime childcare advocate and member of the Coalition of Child Care Advocates, told the audience that she's been encouraged by the public protests in recent weeks to cuts to child-care funding and said that parents must continue to let their local MLAs and MPs know what they think.

"Because it is so clear (that cuts) are not defensible ... there has been a broad range of people speaking out," she said, adding that the public outcry since the cancellation of the federal early learning and child care plan - which cut $455 million in transfer payments to B.C. in the coming three years - has been "historic."

"There are more voices than ever. Decision makers need to hear from the parents. Let your (politicians) know," she said, adding that letters, phone calls and e-mails are all effective.

New Westminster-Coquiltam NDP MP Dawn Black, one of a half-dozen local politicians in the crowd, agreed.

"I want to plead with each and every one of you to keep putting pressure on. ... This is outrageous. This is really outrageous," she said.

Lynell Anderson, another panel member and a certified general accountant and project manager with the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, told the crowd that Canada falls far behind other developed nations in terms of spending on child care.

In a ranking of 14 countries looking at child-care spending compared to the gross domestic product, Canada came in last place, behind most European countries and even Australia and the U.S.

"Child care is the missing piece (in Canada)," she said. "Despite the evidence, quality child care is neither affordable or available. ... Less than 15 per cent of children in B.C. have access to licensed child care."

To create a stable system of quality care and access, Anderson said the government needs to inject funds to lower parent fees, create more spaces and increase wages for the traditionally poorly paid workers in the field.

Panel member Wendy Cooper, a member of the Provincial Child Care Council and the operator of a child-care facility, said the past year has been extremely challenging for child-care operators and parents, calling child care in B.C. "extremely fragile and underfunded."

"There is nothing more supportive to a mother's peace of mind, than knowing her child is receiving caring, quality child care," she said. "Many women want to work, many women need to work ... we need to provide quality child care."

She said she sees many of the best child-care workers forced to leave field due to low wages.

"The wages are so poor that the very best in the field need to look elsewhere," she said.

An audience member and new early child care worker told the crowd that she made more money "cooking frozen pizzas" than she does as a registered ECE worker in a child-care facility.

As for the Federal government's universal child care benefit, which provides parents with $100 per child under the age of six, several audience and panel members said it fell far short of creating and supporting quality care.

"I don't want my $200 a month from Harper. He can have it back. I want to be able to access quality child care," said one mother of two who had both her children on wait lists for over a year before finding care.

"The government has been able to pick on us because we don't have the time (to fight back)," she said, saying many parents simply don't have the opportunity to write a letter or protest because they're too busy raising their children.

Chudnovsky agreed.

"We know that Stephen Harper and his government have failed," she said. "So too has our provincial government failed. .. The province failed by not standing up (to the federal decision to cancel the early learning and child care program.)

"Can you imagine another government file where you could cut $455 million and not have some outcry?

"The government says they have no choice ... but families across the province are not fooled. Quality child care matters. Poor quality does harm. Mothers are in the labor force to stay and we're not going away."

Chudnovsky said recent cuts are all the more upsetting because the province has a surplus.

"B.C. has the money it needs to build a system. Now is the time for a solution."

She said she was calling on finance minster Carole Taylor and Premier Gordon Campbell to build a child-care system.

Several local politicians were in the audience along with Black, including fellow NDP MPs Bill Siksay (Burnaby Douglas) and Peter Julian (Burnaby New Westminster), Burnaby Edmonds MLA Raj Chouhan, New Westminster MLA Chuck Puchmayr, Coquitlam Maillardville MLA Diane Thorne, Burnaby city councillor Sav Dhaliwal, as well as New Westminster city councillors Bob Osterman and Bill Harper.

In January, the minister responsible for child care, Linda Reid, announced that funding changes were being made in response to the cancellation of the federal early learning and child care plan.

These included significant cuts to the budgets of the Child Care Resource and Referral programs, cuts to the child-care centres' operating funds, a freeze to major capital funding for new centres and a cap on new spaces.

The announcement led most resource and referral programs to announce they'd have to close their doors, and many child-care centres to say their monthly fees would need to go up to accomodate the changes.

Last week, Reid announced that the funding for the resource and referral programs was being reinstituted to $9 million, from a high of $14 million.