Kamloops left behind in delayed $10-a-day daycare program

A Kamloops city councillor said families are being left behind as BC lags in its $10-a-day childcare program.

Coun. Dale Bass said while hundreds of families are on daycare waitlists, only three facilities are under the program locally, compared to 11 in Kelowna.

For many daycares, it’s not worth the hurdles they must leap to get the funding when the province makes it available, an issue now persisting for years under the program.

“We just have a whole lot of childcare centres that are too expensive for many, many families,” Bass said.

The BC NDP has campaigned on the affordable daycare promise for more than one election and the province set itself a 2028 deadline for a universal $10-a-day program.

It’s not likely to meet that goal, nor is it a focus for the childcare and education ministry, according to The Tyee.

Along with the slow implementation of the program, some Kamloops daycares have repeatedly been denied provincial funding for expansion, including one partnered with the Royal Inland Hospital Foundation, Bass said.

She said on just one Kamloops daycare’s waitlist of between 800 and 1,000 families, 200 of them are health-care workers.

“So, if I’m thinking of moving to Kamloops and I’m a professional with kids, wow, there’s no child care available, I’m not going to Kamloops,” Bass said. “Childcare impacts every aspect of life and, in the end, what this is doing is harming the future, because it’s harming the children.”

Kamloops isn’t the only city with long waitlists and a low proportion of affordable daycares.

According to a BC childcare lobby group, Thompson-Okanagan families have a 10 per cent chance of getting a $10 daycare spot, as well as Metro Vancouver families.

Families are further off in the Fraser Valley with a one-in-31 chance, according to the BC Coalition of Child Care Advocates.

“I know they’ve got a $10 billion deficit, but how many millions are they spending on a soccer game? And childcare centres aren’t being funded,” Bass said, referring to the over $600 million BC taxpayers may shoulder for FIFA World Cup events in Vancouver.

“Even though I’m only talking about Kamloops, this is happening elsewhere in the province,” the city councillor said.

Bass is bringing a motion to Kamloops city council calling on the province to increase its funding for early childhood educators, to invest in new childcare facilities and to integrate them within school facilities.

If approved, Kamloops council would urge other BC municipalities to do the same.