City backs child care

By Dan Hilborn
Published June 7, 2006


Burnaby city council is joining the Code Blue campaign in an attempt to get the new Conservative government to live up to the earlier Liberal government's commitments on child care.

The campaign, which had its start in Ontario, calls on Ottawa to honour its commitment to earlier federal-provincial cost-sharing agreements to build new child-care spaces.

In a report from the city's social issues committee, council was told that the cancellation of the 2005 agreements could result in the loss of funding for child-care programs.

Representatives from the city's child-care resources and referral program told the committee that there were only 3,171 licensed child-care spaces in Burnaby as of June 2005 and an average of 200 calls per month from parents seeking their services.

The report also pointed to statistics from the 2001 census that indicate Burnaby has 11,460 children between the ages of zero and five years old, with another 14,670 children between the ages of six and 12 years.

Council was also told that there is a waiting list for every child-care centre in Burnaby.

According to the report, the child-care workers' biggest fear is that the provincial government might cut back its funding of child-care programs as a result of the cancellation of the 2005 federal-provincial agreements.

Council will send a letter to the prime minister and Burnaby's members of Parliament, asking them to honour the earlier agreements and to take other steps to "maintain and enhance" the child-care system in Canada.

Council will also send letters to the premier and Burnaby's MLAs, urging them to continue current levels of funding for child care, irrespective of the federal government's response.

Council passed the two recommendations without comment.