Province has stopped making sense
Nanaimo News Bulletin
By Mitch Wright
August 28, 2009

There’s lots of things I can’t quite grasp – advanced algebra, society’s general obsession with all things celebrity, the general workings of the female brain, to name a few….

Add to that list the policies of our current provincial government.

For example, never mind that a few months ago the plan to implement all-day kindergarten was too complicated to rush into without careful consideration, now the province is going ahead full bore and expects to start phasing it in by next fall. In one year.

Never mind that no one – not the government, not school districts, not the public – has any idea how it’s going to roll out, or where, or how much it’s all going to cost (some estimates say $600 million, but that guesstimate didn’t come from the government, so it’s likely even more than that).

I’m a big supporter of early-childhood education and giving kids the best opportunities to realize their potential, but this costly flip-flop (costly, of course, only if the province actually decides to cough up the dollars) comes while B.C. is cash-strapped like never before and slicing and dicing existing costs with a samurai sword….

Either we’re in a financial crisis or we’re not. Judging by this decision, it’s difficult to say which it is.

But wait. There’s more.

A few years ago, did our government not commit to making this the ‘most literate jurisdiction in North America’?

Now, while the decision mentioned above would seem to contribute toward accomplishing that admirable ambition, I fail to see how reducing library budgets (roughly $4 million) and eliminating university-based literacy coordinators ($1.6 million) helps get more people reading….

Instead of looking at the long-range benefits, both socially and economically, of supporting literacy and reaping the rewards down the road, our government is making myopic moves to save a few bucks now….