Parents caught in scramble for child care; Minister says B.C. is doing its part to whittle down lengthy wait lists
Times Colonist (Victoria)
March 14, 2008
By: Sandra McCulloch

Susan Kerr is worried that spending five years away from her job as an environmental scientist has set her behind her peers. But the 40-year-old Saanich mother can't go back to work until she finds a child-care space for her toddler.

There's nothing available for her target date of September 2008, but she's found a tentative placement for the following year.

"It's frustrating, for sure," said Kerr in a telephone interview yesterday.

She and husband David, a high-school teacher, are looking at taking in an international student next year to help cover daycare costs….

The Kerrs have plenty of company in their search for daycare places for their children.

Victoria NDP MLA Rob Fleming points the finger of blame at the province, saying more needs to be done to help families on waiting lists.

He released figures yesterday from the Vancouver Island Health Authority that indicate the number of child-care spaces in the capital region have dropped by 133 between March 2007 and January 2008.

"Given that the provincial government has announced a goal of increasing spaces by 1,000 a year between now and 2010, this is a huge step backward," Fleming said.

"This region has acute needs for child-care service. I think this is one of the strongest regional issues there is. Wait lists here are in some cases two years.

"People are registering their children usually in the first trimester of pregnancy."

But Linda Reid, Minister of State for Childcare, said the province is doing its part to whittle down long wait lists.

"We feel the provision of child care is a shared responsibility. There are opportunities for local government to be involved."

Wait-list data can also give an inaccurate picture, said Reid.

"Wait-list data is very problematic because there are lots of families who haven't conceived a child yet and they will proudly tell me they're on a wait list for child care," she said.

There's no way to know if there's one family on 20 different lists or if the lists have 20 different children, she added.

Reid said improvements are on the way. In the last 10 months on Vancouver Island, there have been 23 new facilities opened, creating 960 new spaces, said Reid.

There's a total of 20,000 child-care spaces on Vancouver Island in 1,188 licenced facilities….

"We think we're doing some really good foundation work in terms of getting people to come into the sector," Reid said.