A family crisis affecting all
Pique Newsmagazine
Oct 15, 2008
By: Rebecca Wood Barrett, Whistler

Whistler families are facing a crisis. On Nov. 28th, the Whistler Children’s Centre - Spring Creek campus will close its doors to the Daisies (3-18 months) and Blueberries (18-36 months) programs. The daycare's closure will leave 16-20 families without daycare, and there are another 169 families at the WCC whose daycare security is tenuous.

Under current legislation, the Daisies and Blueberries programs require an ECE (Early Childhood Education) and an IT (Infant Toddler) certified teacher, and Whistler is facing a shortage of these teachers, due to a number of reasons that need to be addressed at the municipal, provincial and federal levels of government:

1. It takes eight weeks to six months to allow ECE/IT Teachers from other countries or provinces to have their training recognized by the B.C. Licensing system. This process needs to be dramatically improved.

2. ECE/IT teachers are underpaid and there is a high-burnout rate. Teachers should be paid more, minimum $20/hour.

3. There is a lack of affordable housing in Whistler. Temporary solutions for the next two winters need to be found NOW.

My son attends two days of daycare at the Centre, and I work for two different companies in Whistler, one as a bookkeeper, and the other as a television producer. The opportunity to keep working means that my skills are kept current, and that I don’t lose a foothold in the workforce. Like most families in Canada, my husband and I need more than one income to pay the bills. I feel fortunate to have found work in the career I am trained for (film & television) in Whistler. On the flip side, Whistler is fortunate to have me, a highly-educated, highly-experienced worker at the senior level, working for less than typical industry wages who is also willing to fit into the seasonal highs and lows this town experiences. If I don’t have affordable, reliable daycare, I will need to leave the businesses I work for. Who will fill my place? There is nowhere for newcomers to live!

If each family at the Spring Creek Centre has to leave their jobs, or juggle their schedules so that both parents work less to take care of their child, that’s potentially 40 companies that will be affected, right now, coming into the busiest time of the year. There are also 96 families on the waitlist! Whistler is experiencing a housing and workforce crunch. I encourage the families, businesses and municipality of Whistler to make their opinions known to our elected officials about the critical state of daycare in Canada.