All-day kindergarten just too expensive for B.C.: Liberals have too many budgetary headaches already
By Michael Smyth, The Province
June 18, 2009

The allure of all-day kindergarten for kids as young as three was an enticing pre-election plum for Gordon Campbell to dangle before cash-poor, stress-rich parents.

Think of the savings in daycare costs alone, …

But the Liberals never seemed genuinely committed to their own brainstorm. At the same time as they mused about opening the school system to a massive influx of toddlers, they were busy closing 177 schools because there were supposedly no kids to fill them.

I think my own four-year-old could tell you what was wrong with that picture.

No surprise, then, that one of the first post-election actions of newly minted Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid was to officially nix the government's kindergarten revolution. At least for now.

One of the reasons? Not enough classroom space, she explained. Classic.

Circular logic aside, there are several bigger reasons for the climb-down, the biggest being money.

Providing all-day kindergarten for three-, four- and five-year-olds would cost $600 million a year by one estimate. Plus 1,000 new teachers. Plus 4,000 new early childhood educators. Plus a billion dollars to build new schools.

All of which must have provoked a few guffaws around the cabinet table this week. This is a government looking for change under the sofa cushions to keep the deficit from exploding.

Embarking on what amounts to the biggest and most expensive expansion of government-run child-care services in the province's history is about as likely as Campbell taking B.C. back into the fast-ferry business….

The Ontario teachers' union, afraid of early childhood educators impinging on their turf, has threatened to sue the government. Stay-at-home parents, angry that their tax dollars will pay to look after other people's kids, are demanding tax credits to care for their own children at home.

Campbell would face similar headaches here.

That didn't stop MacDiarmid from insisting all-day kindergarten is still a B.C. possibility. But I wouldn't hold my breath.

With the economy and budget in the straits they are, I don't see the Liberals going anywhere near this one for the remainder of Campbell's new mandate -- unless it's to promise all-day kindergarten again around 2013, just in time for the next election.