Guest: Sharon Gregson ($10aDay spokesperson)
On this edition of Journal: daycare. Remember the promises made by Premiers Horgan and Eby, as well as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for $10aDay centres for all British Columbians?
Well, here we are. What happened?
The facts are pretty discouraging:
Roughly, only 10% of BC’s 180,000 available daycare spaces are, in fact, $10aDay.
In February of this year, the government actually paused an already-inadequate program, leaving a brand-new, beautiful, purpose-built daycare for 69 children sitting empty in Coal Harbour. It is empty not because of no need. After all, there are more than 5 thousand families on the daycare waitlists.
No, it is empty due to lack of adequate funding.
And yet, last year, reporter Alec Lazenby revealed that BC asked the federal government for permission to NOT use $639 million of the $1 billion allocated to us for the program.
What is going on?
None of this makes any sense.
So here’s a question: despite this gaping hole in our social services, daycare did not make it to the top of the recent election agenda – until the press discovered that Premier Eby’s family was taking up two of these precious $10aDay spaces.
Sharon Gregson has received many honours for her work in trying to achieve universal $10aDay daycare in BC as the provincial spokesperson for the campaign, working with the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC. She says the problem isn’t that the Premier managed to get into the program – it’s that so many others have been left out.
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