Are our children up for sale?
Burnaby Now
November 24, 2007
Opinion By: Lynette McBride

I am very concerned, as a taxpaying citizen, about recent events concerning B.C.'s children.

On Oct. 1, the provincial government announced that it would be offering subsidies to for-profit child-care centres. This alone is cause for alarm - my tax dollars being spent to increase the profit margins of child-care operators? Even more alarming is the fact that, in mid-September, even before the B.C. government announcement, letters were being sent out to for-profit child-care centres in B.C. from an investment firm that describes itself as the growth engine for an Australian-based multinational child-care corporation.

These letters represent a large-scale attempt to buy out small for-profit child-care programs. This is not a case of new daycare spaces being opened.

Once having bought a centre, that centre could even be closed, thereby eliminating child-care spaces. This corporation is a publicly traded multinational and, as such, has no accountability except to its shareholders. The company's website already includes a Canadian chain called '1, 2, 3 Busy Beavers.'

The experience of several other countries, such as Australia, the U.K., Japan and the U.S., with such large chain child-care corporations has been a continuous rise in parent fees where governments have had to continuously raise parent subsidies to compensate. Furthermore, responsiveness to community needs and to children with extra needs is not part of the business mandate.

Papers received by a Langley child-care operator ask questions about its land and building and the number of spaces. There are no demographic type questions about staff or children. As a private corporation, it has no responsibility to ensure that northern, Interior and/or rural areas have adequate child care, unless these are determined to be profitable. There is also a very real risk of the corporation demanding additional funding equal to that received by non-profits. This has, in fact, occurred in other countries.

This is not how I would like to see more of my "tax dollars put to work."

In addition, this corporation provides its own standardized child-care training. Currently, in B.C., colleges and universities provide early childhood education training that is research-based, through accredited programs. Would this corporation's internationally standardized training take into account B.C.'s multicultural context? Is it research-based? We don't know. They have their own toy company and their own maintenance company.

Are the toys educationally and developmentally sound, based on up-to-date early childhood research? Again, we don't know.

That my tax dollars could potentially be used to line the pockets of the owners of a foreign multinational and its shareholders disgusts and angers me in the extreme.

That B.C.'s children may be 'sold' to foreign interests disgusts me even more. Our children are not for sale in B.C.

I call on the provincial government to take steps to ensure that this does not happen in B.C.