Ten-Dollar-a-Day Child Care Is Winning the BC Election

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.”

The NDP’s pledges

Seven years into the launch of the $10-a-day program under the NDP government, the party’s platform boasts that 150,000 kids are currently accessing reduced-fee child care. The government has created over 45,000 new affordable child-care spaces to date, the NDP says.

Some of that space creation has come from federal funding for building out public and non-profit child-care spaces.

Provincial data shows a growth of 39,904 child-care spaces that participate in government programs, to a current total of over 154,000 spaces, since 2018-19.

More than 15,300 of those spaces are part of the $10-a-day program.

But Gregson noted “almost all” licensed child-care spaces in the province are receiving some kind of provincial government subsidy.

“You get operating funding, which allows you to lower parent fees by up to $900 a month,” Gregson said. “If you’re a $10-a-day site, you get enough operating funding to lower parents’ fees to $200 a month.”

Families earning up to $111,000 annually can also access the monthly Affordable Child Care Benefit to assist with their child-care costs, which for low-income parents accessing $10-a-day child care can bring their costs down to zero.

The NDP also increased early childhood educator wages in the province with a $6-per-hour wage enhancement, Gregson said.

But it’s not the wage grid and access to pensions and comprehensive health insurance plans they’ve been asking for, she noted. Six other provinces have achieved the wage grid, she added.

“It’s a big missing piece. Nobody’s going to be able to grow the system without investing in the educators,” Gregson said, adding the NDP had agreed to develop and implement a wage grid, but it’s not in the party’s platform.

If the NDP were to form government again, its platform promises to invest another $500 million into creating new affordable child-care spaces.

It also promises to bring before- and after-school care for school-aged kids into every provincial school district. This is similar to its 2020 election pledge to make access to such care “universal.”

Gregson would like to see the NDP explicitly state that it would use elementary school sites for before- and after-school care.

She says she’d also like the NDP to commit to amending the School Act to allow districts to run child care over the summer, create a capital budget for additional child-care spaces and eliminate wait-lists for before- and after-school care.

The BC Conservatives’ promises

“I think that there is some perhaps lack of understanding in the Conservative platform about the child-care system that exists at the moment,” Gregson said.

“Ten-dollar-a-day child care is not a failure; it just hasn’t moved fast enough. For the families that access $10-a-day child care, it’s a huge success.”

The BC Conservatives, who have been releasing their platform in a piecemeal way instead of as a single document like the BC Greens and NDP have done, do not agree.

Their Oct. 4 child-care announcement described the current state of $10-a-day child care in B.C. as a “failure,” citing a University of British Columbia school of social work and Centre for Family Equity study that they claim could find only 17 low-income single mothers who had accessed the program in B.C.

The study, which interviewed 30 low-income lone mothers total, does include 17 low-income moms accessing the program, said Viveca Ellis, co-author of the study and executive director of the Centre for Family Equity.*

But it is not a census of how many low-income single moms are currently accessing the program, she said.

“In qualitative research, it’s not about numbers but about quality” of the data, said Ellis, whose organization is non-partisan.

The data shows that the program, along with the Affordable Child Care Benefit, is effective at bringing single-mom-run families out of poverty, while also providing parents more time to spend with their children, Ellis said.

“We just want much more of a program we have discovered is extremely successful for low-income single moms in B.C.,” she said, including more spaces for kids with disabilities who need extra support to access child-care spaces.

But B.C. has child-care deserts where families lack access to $10-a-day child-care spaces or licensed child-care spaces in general, Ellis said, adding that $10-a-day child-care spaces should be as ubiquitous and universally accessible as kindergarten spots.

Which is perhaps why the BC Conservatives are promising to introduce “real $10-a-day child care.” This includes an expansion of the existing program, as well as enhancing access for the families with the fewest child-care alternatives.

One of the ways they plan to expand is through putting child care into existing schools, like the NDP has also promised. But another is by finding and addressing “unreasonable or unnecessary regulations” or “red tape” that prevent new spaces from opening. That is concerning for Gregson.

“The ‘red tape’ is licensing: that’s what ensures minimal health and safety regulations,” she said. “We don’t want to eliminate licensing.”

The BC Conservatives also want to open up the $10-a-day enrolment to for-profit licensed child-care spaces in B.C.

The initial call for child-care programs to enrol in $10-a-day was open to both non-profit and for-profit licensed child-care centres, Gregson said.

But subsequent opportunities for child-care spaces to enrol have been open only to non-profits. The coalition would like existing licensed for-profit centres to be allowed to join $10-a-day, too.

Twenty-four-hour child-care spaces are also on the table if the BC Conservatives form government. That’s similar to the flexible evening, early morning and weekend child-care options the coalition would like to see for parents who work those hours.

The BC Conservatives’ plan also addresses families who don’t want to put their kids into licensed child care by promising to review and increase both the Affordable Child Care Benefit and BC Family Benefit to support families, regardless of who looks after their kids.

“But it doesn’t have any costing associated with how that would help them,” Gregson said.

Finally, the BC Conservatives want to open up early childhood education credentials and certification to teachers in the province, allowing them to either transition into becoming early childhood education workers or work as early education assistants in their off time.

But Gregson doesn’t think teachers, who do have wage grids in public school districts and earn more money than early childhood educators on average, will likely want to be early childhood assistants.

Green Party proposals

The BC Greens are the only party to make promises about improving early childhood educator pay, calling for incremental increases to a wage grid that will see them earning between $30 to $40 an hour by 2026.

“They’re using some of our language there,” Gregson said about the wages, adding she is also pleased to see the party promise access to pensions and health benefits for educators.

This would be part of an overall plan to ensure $10-a-day care is accessible to everyone who needs it, including creating a universal early childhood education funding model that covers licensing, space creation, wage grids, staffing and fee reduction initiatives.

This model would include $100 million for a capital program to create child-care spaces in existing schools and $250 million to create more child-care spots for kids under five. “Not quite as big as the NDP’s,” Gregson noted.

The Greens also pledge to increase the number of child-care spaces for before- and after-school care programs, though no numbers are cited.

Finally, a BC Green government would also implement paid final practicums for early childhood educators in training, as well as student loan forgiveness programs.

* Story updated on Oct. 16 at 9:17 p.m. to clarify how many mothers were interviewed in the Centre for Family Equity study.

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