Crisis Relief: Advocates unveil a child-care plan for Victoria
Vancouver Island News Group - Monday Magazine
October 2, 2008
By: Anna Kemp

All over B.C. and across most of Canada it's being called a child-care crisis. Parents spend years on waitlists hoping for daycare spaces. Funding cuts have led to increased fees, concerns about quality of care and, in many communities, have forced child-care centres to close their doors. Clearly child care needs more government funding, and the first step, according to two local groups, is to calculate just how much is needed.

Last Wednesday, the Regional Child Care Council (RCCC) and Partners in Learning and Advocacy for Young Children (PLAY) unveiled Building on our Strengths: A Child Care Plan for Victoria. The document details what it would cost to build an effective child-care system for the Greater Victoria region, taking into account the various levels of daycare different parents and their kids would require.

"Whatever type of care a family needs-which might be part-time, drop-in or full-time-we costed a system people could access as they need it," says Enid Elliot, a member of PLAY and chair of RCCC. "Seventy percent of women with children under six are working. Parents are quite desperate because they can't find child care."

Lynell Anderson, a certified general accountant and senior researcher with the Human Early Learning Partnership, worked with PLAY and RCCC on the project.

"The plan is premised on three things," says Anderson. "Firstly, that all children have access to quality affordable care, with a range of types of places. Secondly, that child care receives direct public funding . . . like parks and libraries, to make sure it is affordable and accessible . . . And finally, the system should build on the strengths that the community already has to offer . . . like existing child-care facilities and skilled, committed staff and volunteers."

There are currently 10,635 regulated spaces in the capital region-but another 13,811 spaces are needed to make sure that every child has a space. According to the plan, this will cost an additional $158 million per year.

"I think we want to stress that the cost is very comparable to the cost of the public school system and the post-secondary system," says Anderson. Building on our Strengths notes that the average investment for year-round, full-time care for three-to-five-year-olds is $8,960. British Columbia spends $8,078 per pupil in the public school system and $15,000 per post-secondary student.

"We hope work done locally will help inform the province as it plans child- care funding," says Anderson, adding that the plan was shown to the Ministry of Children and Family Development before being announced publicly.

Linda Reid, minister of state for child care, criticized the plan, however, saying $158 million is not an accurate figure. "The plan focuses on operating costs only, but what about the capital costs of constructing those spaces?"

Reid says the plan is premature, as a feasibility study is currently underway to examine the possible implementation of all-day kindergarten for five-year-olds, as well as kindergarten for three- and four-year-olds. "I'm not sure what it has added to the debate."

Victoria-Hillside MLA Rob Fleming calls the plan "financially realistic."

"With proper attention and focus we could start addressing the number of daycare spaces and the costs of recruitment and retention and build a quality child-care system," he says.

Fleming does not, however, believe that is possible under the current provincial government. "The B.C. Liberals have completely failed on all three of the components of child-care needs. It was really disappointing early this year when PLAY released figures showing that the number of infant and toddler spaces had actually declined. We are moving backwards."

Victoria NDP MP Denise Savoie, who was forwarded a copy of the Building on our Strengths report, echoes Fleming's sentiment-although she lays the blame for the current child-care deficit at the feet of the federal government.

"The Conservatives promised, I think it was, 125,000 spaces three years ago, " says Savoie. "And under their system there haven't been any. There are fewer childcare spaces in Victoria now than there were three years ago."

Prior to the federal election call, Savoie watched a national child-care program bill she proposed-which would have established 150,000 child-care spaces in its first year-wind its way through parliament. It had the support of all opposition parties and was headed for third reading when the writ was dropped.

"But we knew, the government told us, they were not going to allow it to pass, that they were not going to respect the will of the majority of parliament," says Savoie. "We knew that the Conservatives were going to block it. They are ideologically opposed to that. With them, it's everyone on their own."