As SFU's day-care strike enters its second week, managers are calling for cash from the City of Burnaby.

Karen Atlin, fundraising coordinator for SFU Childcare Society, said she sent a request for $40,000 in May, but the city rejected it.

She plans to keep trying until the city agrees to help.

"I got a one-pager saying basically that they see child care as a provincial responsibility and don't want to assume that role.

"I would like to see that child care is everyone's responsibility."

Originally the society planned to use the cash to expand its infant and toddler programs, which have a 300-person waiting list.

"Expanding toddler care is very costly. It doesn't pay for itself," Atlin said, adding the City of Vancouver helps fund child care at the University of British Columbia.

But the need has grown desperate since 67 unionized employees went on strike last week to back demands for pensions and higher wages.

Last week, society director Pat Frouws said she's asked the provincial government and Simon Fraser University for emergency funding to get programs running again.

The society is also considering raising fees or meeting the union's needs temporarily and going bankrupt, she said.

Last year, the federal and provincial governments announced funding cuts to child-care programs.

And Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan believes they should take responsibility, not the city.

"We're not funders of child care," Corrigan said in an interview.

"This expectation that property taxes should pay for it is unfair."

Corrigan said he wasn't aware that the City of Vancouver helped fund child care at UBC but noted Vancouver has a larger business tax base than Burnaby.

Burnaby encourages developers to build child- care centres through its rezoning process, he added.

Coun. Lee Rankin said giving cash to one child-care centre would open a "floodgate" of requests from other daycare centres in Burnaby.

"The demand is... certainly large. If you do one, you would have to provide for all of them," Rankin added. …

The issue surfaced when councillors discussed changes to a new child-care facility at UniverCity that will replace a proposed newborn to three-year-old program with three- to five-year-old programs.

Under-three child care requires a higher staff-to-child ratio than programs for older children, making it less profitable for operators.

A report from SFU Childcare Society says under-three child care has become scarce in Burnaby.

Before last week's strike, SFU provided roughly a quarter - about 72 spots - of the under-three child care available in the city. Of its 630-person wait-list, almost half are applying for under-three child care, the report sates.

Minister of State for Child Care Linda Reid did not return calls…