BCIT child care may not reopen for a year

By Dan Hilborn
Published Aug. 24, 2005


The president of the BCIT student association is worried that plans to reopen the child-care centre at the largest technical training institute in the province may not come to fruition for another year.

"The possibility of reopening in September is zero," Ashley Steier, president of the BCIT Student Association, said earlier this month, on a day when the B.C. Liberal government announced $8.1 million in new funding for child care centres around the province. "Even if a plan is approved, it still has to be built."

The student association, which provided operating funds for BCIT's child-care centre over the past 14 years, intends to present its latest proposal to reopen the facility to the regular October meeting of the BCIT board of governors.

The previous child-care facility was moved off campus to Willingdon Church in the spring of 2004 where it operated until June. That centre offered 25 child-care spaces for a campus that serves almost 50,000 full and part-time students per year.

Steier said discussions to reopen the centre are hinging on issues of "feasibility, exact location and the costs involved." One of the biggest stumbling blocks is the lack of usable space at the Willingdon Avenue campus, he said.

"Location on campus is a big one," he said. "BCIT has a lot of their own plans as far as expansion of the campus goes, and we have a large campus, but a lot of it is environmentally sensitive and there are a lot of extenuating circumstances."

The closure came two years after Burnaby-Willingdon MLA John Nuraney offered a $4,000 grant to resolve what was described as "numerous challenges" related to the repair and renovation of the portable trailer that housed the facility.

In February 2004, when BCIT first announced that the facility was no longer structurally sound, the student association garnered 1,200 names on a petition demanding the centre either remain open or be replaced by a new facility.

"It came down to a board decision," former BCIT spokesperson Michael Becker said at the time. "The basic rationale was the poor condition of the facility and their (the BCIT board) wish not to take dollars out of the education budget to provide day care."

Steier said the child-care centre is seen as an "essential service" by the students.

"This is definitely an essential service and it always has been," Steier said. "That's why we continued to run it on our own. With more women coming to get their certificates in the trades, it's important for them to have access to day care on campus."

However, the president of the student association said there's not much his group can do if the institution cannot find the space.

"Right now, we're focusing our energy on having something on campus. ... And if that doesn't happen, we'll look elsewhere. We can't look at a ton of options all at once and do them well, so we're focussing on the campus.

"If something was going to happen, I'd say it would be this spring - February or March is our hope. Again, that's completely contingent on how the board of governors feels about it."