B.C. United proposes top-up payments for child-care costs

British Columbia's Opposition party is pitching a child-care plan that includes giving money directly to families who are not part of the province's $10-a-day program.

B.C. United has also proposed better wages for early childhood educators and opening more child-care spaces in public facilities, including schools and hospitals.

"I want all the parents out there struggling with unaffordable daycare to understand this: we are going to fix this problem immediately," Leader Kevin Falcon said in a news conference Thursday.

But child-care advocates voiced concern about the idea of giving funds directly to parents, saying it won't create more spaces for children and could create accountability issues.

Money not equal to spaces: advocate

B.C. began testing $10-a-day child care with 1,300 spaces in 2018 as part of an election promise by the NDP. That number has grown to more than 15,000 as of March.

Under Falcon's proposed plan, families who don't have access to those spaces would get a top-up to give them the equivalent of paying $10 per day.

By way of example, the party said a family that pays $1,155 a month for child care would receive $955 a month until they could access an $10-a-day space.

But Sharon Gregson, provincial spokesperson for the $10-a-day child-care campaign who works with the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of B.C., says the plan is flawed.

"Making cash transfers to families doesn't magically mean there's going to be more child care out there for them to buy," she told CBC News.

"It is just a way to keep government costs getting higher without very much accountability back to taxpayers."

Minister of State for Child Care Mitzi Dean said the plan is "just not credible" and fees would go up under B.C. United.

"Their record is actually cutting subsidies for child care," Dean told Radio Canada. "And as a result, we ended up with really skyrocketing costs for child care for families across British Columbia, and families can't afford to go back to that kind of a model."

Calls for more solutions

Emily Gawlick, executive director of Early Childhood Educators of B.C., questions whether there will be a cap on the money given to parents, and says the money would be better spent on existing daycare subsidies.

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Parents who are waiting months to years for child care say they are unable to work and are getting frustrated by the uncertainty. Despite significant investments to lower child care fees, advocates say there are still not enough spaces. 

"Giving funds directly to families, just for them to pass it on to their provider, doesn't put the onus on those programs to deliver those high quality services. And that's what we really need to focus on," Gawlick said in an interview.

Gregson wants a mandate and funding to all school districts so that elementary schools can start providing before and after school care, and care during the summer as well. She's also calling for more child-care spaces to be built into new housing.

"We've made big progress since 2018 but [we're] not moving quickly enough at this point," she said.