What B.C.'s bad-news budget means for individuals and families; Frozen or cut funds, harmonized tax, raised MSP likely to take a heavy toll
The Province
Sept 2, 2009
By: Wendy Mclellan and Jack Keating

EXCERPT

Education

On the education front, every five-year-old in B.C. will get to go to school all day in the fall of 2011 -- if their parents let them.

Beginning in September 2010, about half of B.C.'s kindergarteners will get to start school full time if they choose to; the following year, all children will have the option of full-time kindergarten.

The new Liberal budget includes $151 million -- $44 million in 2010 and $107 million in 2011 -- to introduce the program across B.C.

But while the government has committed to all-day kindergarten, Vancouver school board chairwoman Patti Bacchus said school boards aren't seeing any budget increases to pay for converting classrooms, buying extra books, blocks and learning materials -- or to pay school administrative costs for opening up potentially hundreds of new kindergarten classes.....

Families

Families will see some benefit from a bigger personal tax exemption allowed them, but the new harmonized sales tax may cancel it out.

Michael Laycock, a self-employed technical editor whose family lives in Vancouver, doesn't expect businesses to pass along HST savings.

"It just seems to me Vancouver is a really expensive city to begin with, and it just seems like the HST is just really going to add up," he said.

The Laycocks feel lucky to have their two-year-old daughter in daycare -- "but it is expensive."

According to the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of B.C., in 2008, an average Lower Mainland family with a four-year-old in full-time child care and a seven-year-old in after-school care paid 20 per cent of their monthly expenses, or $12,000 for child care -- if they could find it.