Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

By Pieta Woolley
Publish Date: December 13, 2007

On weekday mornings, Nancy Liang leaves her home in Coquitlam and drives her two-year-old son to his daycare, which is in a grey industrial-business zone in Richmond. The building that contains his child-care centre looks dismal. A furniture store takes up the whole first floor. It borders a gravel parking lot and is across the street from a cement factory. Truck traffic on Sea Island Way trundles by.

But on the second floor of the two-storey building sit the spacious offices of Syscon Justice Systems, a software company that designs computer programs for jails and prisons. This is where Liang works as an application developer and where little Bernard Liu attends daycare with seven other kids aged one to five.

Workplace childcare is relatively new to Canada, but it’s poised to revolutionize how the service is delivered. This year, both the B.C. and federal governments changed laws to make workplace daycares more attractive to businesses. The City of Vancouver will consider a report in the spring of 2008 that could facilitate on-site daycare in office buildings. However, some child-care lobbyists–who have been fighting for a taxpayer-funded system for three decades–hate the idea. (more…)

May is Child Care Month. The Child Care – Let’s Make It Happen! and Code Blue 2007 tour will be visiting a half-dozen BC communities between May 11-25. Events are being co-organized with local groups in Victoria, Duncan, Vernon, Castlegar, Prince Rupert and Richmond. This tour has come together very quickly, and details are still being finalized in locations such as Prince Rupert.

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• Thursday, April 12 – 6:30pm
• Heritage Hall 3102 Main St.
• Vancouver, B.C.
• Info: 604-291-9611

Vancouver Child Care Resource is losing half of its provincial funding at the end of April. Ten neighbourhood-based CCRR services that help families with referrals and subsidies, and give family child care providers training and business support, will be gone.

The Campbell government is also cutting 100% of the Westcoast Provincial Services budget. That means no more access to the unique Westcoast Resource Library that promotes diversity and multiculturalism outside of Vancouver. And, significantly reduced access to the Safe Spaces bullying prevention training for caregivers of 3-5 year olds.
Waitlists are growing and parent fees are rising. Families, child care providers and community leaders are not sitting still for these cuts to urgently-needed child care services.

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Via BC Federation of Labour

• Saturday, March 31, 11am – 12:30pm
• Burrard Bridge, Vancouver
• Gather at 11am at Seaforth Peace Flame Park (south end of bridge by Cornwall Ave.)
• Calling parents, grandparents, early childhood educators and child care supporters to span the bridge sidewalks with signs and songs!

March 30-31 marks the elimination of federal-provincial childcare funding agreements by the Harper Conservatives. It also marks the closure of several childcare resource and referral centres in BC and the elimination of critical services to working families as a result of funding cuts by the Campbell Liberals.

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Tuesday, February 20 is BC Budget Day. The Campbell government began this year by cutting the child care budget. Any announcements they make now will likely be one-time only, stopgap funding that does not even begin to fix the child care problems they’ve caused.

British Columbians are urged to flood the Campbell government with a strong message – restore child care funding and build a child care system!

Please take a moment to fax:

• Premier Gordon Campbell at 250-387-0087
• Minister of Finance Carole Taylor at 250-387-5594
• Minister of State for Child Care Linda Reid at 250-356-8337

Download the fax form here (pdf), and please send a copy of your message to your Liberal MLA. Click for MLA fax numbers.

Working families in every BC community need child care. The provincial government’s funding cuts and attacks on child care programs affects us all, but especially children in BC. By cutting child care funding again, the Campbell government has shown it doesn’t care about the future of our children or working families.

Community response to the most recent child care cuts is building around the province of BC. There are many ways you can help get the message to political leaders that child care funding must be restored immediately and that BC can afford to build a quality, affordable, accessible, public child care system now. Visit bcgeu.ca for more information.

Rallies and protests are scheduled across the province this month, click for a calendar of events (pdf).

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Eliminating separate assistance program reduces Ottawa’s payment to most needy

OTTAWA — Low- and middle-income families will realize the smallest net benefit from the Harper government’s $1,200-a-year child-care payment in part because the Conservatives are scrapping a separate assistance program.

The Conservative plan for meeting the country’s child-care needs is to give families a direct payment of $100 a month, $1,200 annually, for every child under 6. The specifics of how that plan will be unveiled are expected to be in next Tuesday’s budget.

But the young-child supplement of the Canada Child Tax Benefit, which currently pays $20.25 a month to parents who do not claim child-care expenses for their preschool-age children, will be eliminated at the same time. The benefit is due to increase in July to $249 annually.

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OTTAWA – “With two-thirds of mothers with children under the age of three working outside the home to support their families; with three quarters of mothers with children between three and five working outside the home and with more than half of all Canadian children in some form of child care, governments across the country, federal and provincial, have a duty to make sure our children enjoy high-quality and safe child care,” says Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress.

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The fight continues for a national child care program. As outlined in the Throne Speech on Tuesday, the Harper government is moving forward on financial support for families and ignoring the need for quality child care options.

Here are two press releases issued by the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada and a backgrounder on the Conservative’s Community Child Care Investment Program.

• Click for Throne Speech - New government must tackle stable funding for child care press release issued on April 3, 2006.
• Click for Child care to become focus of Parliamentary struggle: Throne Speech shows no compromise press release issued April 4, 2006.
• Here is the backgrounder on the Conservative’s Community Child Care Investment Program.

Via email: It was all coming together: a long-awaited national child care program, the first new social program since medicare. Less than six months ago, federal and provincial governments had signed historic agreements that signaled the beginning of a program aimed at meeting the needs of Canadian children and families.

Now, the new Conservative government has cancelled these agreements, cutting $4 billion in federal funds for child care. Without federal funding, many provincial plans to improve and expand child care will barely, if ever, get off the ground.

The dream of a community-based early learning and care program for all children, regardless of whether their parents are at home or in the workforce, has been 30 years in the making. Now, it could all evaporate.

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Adrian Dix, MLA for Vancouver-Kingsway invites you to attend a Community Childcare Forum:
With the cancellation of the Federal-Provincial child care agreement as of March 2007, child care in our community is in jeopardy once again. Come and express your views.

• Wednesday March 29, 2006 6:15 to 8:00 pm
• Collingwood Neighborhood House 5288 Joyce Street,Multi-purpose room
• Dinner starts at 5:30 pm, child minding available.

For more information about the Canada wide campaign to protect child care, CODE BLUE FOR CHILDCARE, please check out the following web sites www.childcareadvocacy.ca and www.cccabc.bc.ca

In addition to the CCCA’s campaign, the CLC is planning a lobbying campaign on parliament hill in May 2006 to target three priorities

• anti scab legislation
• child care agreements
• healthcare privatization

This information was presented at last nights New Westminster District Labour Council meeting.

One of our new Prime Minister’s first acts was to strongly advise another newly-elected government to honour the agreements negotiated and signed by its predecessor.

Yet, that’s what his new government wants to do. It wants to scrap the child care agreements signed last fall by the federal government and each province. Five-year funding deals will be terminated in March 2007, over the strong objections of provincial governments who made plans to better serve young families and their children.

Why do this? What makes the Prime Minister’s own vision of child care so compelling that it should override and cancel the vision each and every premier signed onto in their contract with Ottawa? Why take away badly-needed child care spaces – like the 6000 spaces that would have been created for working families in Toronto alone.

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Dear Friends of Child Care:

Code Blue for Child Care is a national campaign that is being led by the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada and a coalition of our partners. Code Blue means “medical emergency”. Canadian politicians need to know that saving child care is an urgent need. Make your voice heard before Parliament resumes on April 3.

Do your part by signing the open letter online or  download the PDF to collect signatures on paper and mail them to the CCAAC: http://www.buildchildcare.ca/updir/buildchildcare/code_blue_letter.pdf

Circulate this to as many people as you can - friends, co-workers, family, daycare parents - so that they can add their voices to those telling Stephen Harper that he can’t take away our child care!

The letter is linked on the CCAAC website with other resources for Code Blue.  Check it regularly for updates.

Sincerely, Debra Mayer and Jamie Kass, CCAAC Co-chairs

At least two premiers want to raise the thorny issue of day-care funding when they meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa on Friday night.

Harper’s human resources and social development minister, Diane Finley, sent letters this week confirming that the Conservatives will terminate a $5-billion series of federal-provincial child-care deals after the first year is up.

Read more at cbc.ca.

Tell Stephen Harper to honour the promise of a national child care program: sign the open letter at buildchildcare.ca!

The federal election is over. As a result, child care is at risk as never before. After 30 years of hard work, the foundation of Canada’s newest social program is on the chopping block, with cuts of almost $4 billion on the line. Families, communities, providers, and advocates will not stand by and watch this happen.

Join Code Blue for Child Care and make your voice heard.

CODE BLUE FOR CHILD CARE is a Canada wide campaign to protect the progress we’ve made on child care. Code Blue brings together national, provincial/territorial child care organizations; labour, women’s and social justice groups; and Canadians from all walks of life. Code Blue will speak for the 64% of Canadians who voted for a child care system to meet the needs of Canada’s children, families and communities.

Visit childcareadvocacy.ca for more information.

The following statement is signed by a cross-section of organizations and individuals who believe that we all have a stake in helping parents raise the next generation of Canadians

OTTAWA, Jan. 12 /CNW Telbec/ - As the federal election draws near, Canadians concerned about the country’s future should closely examine the Conservative child care promises. These promises are a throwback to the past. They will not deliver the kind of high quality child care our children deserve nor the support today’s parents need. Instead, a Stephen Harper government would erase the progress we have finally begun to make towards building a system of accessible care for children across Canada.

The Conservatives say they would create 125,000 child care spaces through a $10,000 tax credit to employers.

Past experience with this trickle-down approach has been dismal. Mike Harris’s government used the same scheme-a tax incentive to employers for workplace child care-and no new spaces were created. Saskatchewan and New Brunswick had similar programs with poor results. In any case, most workplace child care in Canada is associated with public sector employers who can’t take advantage of tax credits.

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