The B.C. government announced on Tuesday that it is pressing pause on one of its longstanding promises: universal $10-a-day child care.
The province is putting a three-year freeze on that program.
New enrolment is being paused and there won’t be any further expansion of spaces.
The province says the goal is to stabilize the program, instead of rolling it back and moving to income-tested eligibility.
“We are hearing from families that it’s a lottery system,” B.C. Education Minister Lisa Beare told Global News.
“We’re hearing from operators that we don’t have the operating model quite right. There is an equity in the system.
“We’ve been talking to the federal government and our provincial and territorial partners about the sustainability and the inflexibility in the program. You know, so these are all things that need to be addressed.”
Beare said any current fees are not changing and any families receiving subsidized daycare will continue to do so.
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She said they are going to take this stabilization period to get the program “right.”
Emily Mliecako, with Early Childhood Educators of BC, told Global News that they are happy the province is pausing the program.
“Especially the newest funding model, the operating funding model that is being used right now, we have heard many, many stories and have reported out to government that that funding model isn’t working for the operators and for the sector itself,” she said.
“So having a pause actually was welcomed at that moment.”
However, Mliecako said she thinks a three-year pause is too long.
“With this new amount of funding coming, that is a good thing because it’s maintaining what they have right now,” she said.
“However, there’s no room for real growth or opportunities for early childhood educators to have a robust wage grid, looking at their working conditions, looking at the quality of the programmes of the early childhood child care centres, all of those things are such critical pieces.”
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