Funding to change
Peace Arch News
June 15 2007

- July 1, the B.C. government will cut the amount of money it gives to licensed day cares, adding about $2 a day per child to parents' day-care bills.

- The heftier cost will be offset by the federal Conservative government's Universal Child Care Benefit, which gives parents $100 a month for each child under six.

- The monthly cheque is one of several funding initiatives brought in to replace the previous Liberal government's Early Learning and Child Care agreement - inked in 2005 - which pledged $650 million over five years to fund child care spaces for B.C. kids.

- After it was signed in 2005, the B.C. government increased the amount of funding for child care by a third.

- For the 2005/06 fiscal year, 4,363 licensed centres received funding for a total of 79,198 family and child spaces within those centres province-wide.

- The following year, B.C. provided funding for 82,386 child care spaces. No further spaces are expected to be created until the provincial and federal government finalize the terms of the Child Care Spaces Initiative, worth $250 million per year, with about $32 million allocated to B.C.