Day care closed - for now

By Dan Hilborn
Published July 30, 2005


Staff who used to work at the BCIT child-care centre are angry and upset after the 17-year-old facility was forced to close its doors this summer.

"It's unfortunate that BCIT is now the largest post-secondary institute in the province that doesn't have a child-care facility," said Caroline Kent, former shop steward of the facility that once provided care for 25 children. "This is sending the wrong message."

The centre had been forced to operate out of the nearby Willingdon Church for the past year, after BCIT officials deemed the 14-year-old portable that previously housed the facility to be unsafe. At the time, BCIT announced that the provision of child care was not among its core services.

But Kent said that reasoning flies in the face of other BCIT goals, such as its stated objective of increasing the number of women working in the technical trades.

"It's very hard to recruit young women into trades when they have nowhere to put their children in care," she said.

Kent said the closure is doubly upsetting in light of the fact that Ottawa is in the process of signing multimillion-dollar infrastructure agreements to fund child care in the provinces.

On Thursday, the Province of Ontario received a commitment for $1.1 billion in funding to open 25,000 new child-care spaces within the next three years. By contrast, the Vancouver Sun reported on Thursday morning that day-care waiting lists in B.C. had reached a "crisis point" and some families are making arrangements for child care up to five years before they plan to actually have children.

"Just look at what the federal government is doing," Kent said. "After decades of ignoring child care, they've finally come to the realization of how important it is. They're putting millions of dollars into funding child-care programs, and here BCIT is taking a step backwards."

According to the Sun story, the Society of Richmond Children's Centre has 400 families on its child-care waiting list, even though its centres only have space for 12 infants. Burnaby was described as having "record demand" for infant child-care spaces.

Kent said she is currently looking for a new job but is hopeful the BCIT board of governors will reconsider its decision to stop providing space for child care.

"I just hope BCIT comes to the realization that having a child- care centre on campus is a real selling point for recruiting students," she said.