Excerpt
No matter who forms the next B.C. government, $10-a-day child care has been a success because all three main parties are talking about it, says Sharon Gregson, provincial spokesperson for the $10-a-day campaign with the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC.
“Ten-dollar-a-day is now the measuring stick, because that’s what families want and need,” she said.
The Tyee spoke to Gregson last week for her thoughts on the NDP’s, Conservatives’ and Greens’ child-care platforms.
The Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC has four priority areas to grow the $10-a-day program, Gregson said: implement a publicly funded wage grid for early childhood educators; invite all existing licensed child-care providers into the $10-a-day program; eliminate school-aged child-care wait-lists through use of school sites for before- and after-school child care; and develop a major capital budget for expansion of new child-care spaces.
While the BC Conservatives have branded the NDP government’s efforts to introduce and expand the program a “failure,” Gregson noted the expansion has been significant, even if it has not fully achieved the goals of the coalition’s 10-year timeline for universal access.
“I think we have to be realistic that the 10-year commitment had the COVID years in between, which was an obvious setback because it refocused public policy and public money in another direction, obviously into health care,” she said.
“But it is important that we continue to build on the success of the $10-a-day system and the public policy that is supporting lower parent fees, better quality for children and compensation for educators.
“That’s both what we’re seeing in the government commitments and in the NDP platform.”
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