More than 70 per cent of B.C. residents underestimate how many of the province's children enter school developmentally vulnerable, an Angus Reid poll released today shows.
And most of those polled expressed strong support for increased public spending once they learned how many B.C. children are at risk and how low Canadian investment in early childhood education and daycare is in contrast to other wealthy countries.
Twenty-nine per cent of B.C. children, including many kids from middle-class homes, are developmentally vulnerable, according to the UBC-based Human Early Learning Partnership. "Developmentally vulnerable" is defined as not being ready to learn when a child enters kindergarten.
More than 88 per cent of those polled said they support the provincial government's goal of reducing the number of children at risk in B.C. to 15 per cent by 2015. More that 60 per cent would be willing to endorse an additional public expenditure of a billion dollars a year to reach that goal. Eighty-three per cent supported financial support for low income families. Fifty-eight per cent supported extending paid parental leave to 18 months from one year, with additional months for fathers, and 53 per cent supported limiting the work week for parents of young children to 35 hours.
The poll results were released as part of a two-day symposium at the Wosk Centre for Dialogue titled "Inspiring Innovation -- Investing in Human Capital, Early Care and Learning Hubs," an event supported by the YWCA of Vancouver, City of Vancouver and VanCity Credit Union and hosted by the Vancouver Joint Child Care Council and the Vancouver Early Childhood Development MOU Steering Committee.
Tamara Vrooman, VanCity president and CEO, told the symposium during a morning panel that B.C. needs to make the kind of long term investment in reducing child vulnerability that it is proposing to make in the Site C dam.
"Strong family policy is not simply a social issue," she said. "It is a core economic issue that the business sector needs to talk about in a serious way because investing in our children today is really an investment in our workforce of tomorrow."
The Angus Reid public opinion survey, funded by the YWCA, was conducted online on April 12th of this year and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 per cent. The poll reflects answers from 800 respondents.
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Will Laurier
2 years ago
Interesting
I wonder if the poll asks the respondents if they were willing to pay higher taxes for said ECE increases? Or perhaps that if they felt somebody else should pay?
And just exactly is not going to answer "yes" to a poll that asks:
"do you favour reducing childhood risk?"
In this case, the Early Learning Partnership has decided they want big funding increases. They then commission a poll with questions designed to confirm what they want. The YWCA funded the poll and would play a major part in any universal daycare programme.
How about this question:
"Are you in favour of a doubling of the CCTB in order for a parent to stay home with their child full time?"
But they won't ask that one, will they?
Name
2 years ago
Smart people!
British Columbians are smart enough to know that early intervention saves far more than it costs in the long run. If we want to control social spending and increase productivity, this is one of the smartest places to invest!
zalm
2 years ago
Wilf... or Will or whatever
"I wonder if the poll asks the respondents if they were willing to pay higher taxes for said ECE increases?"
I know what I'd want the polls to say...
"Are you in favour of reducing spending on subsidized roadbuilding for the natural gas industry to reach its gas fields from its current $1 billion to zero in order to fund early childhood education?"
Do I need to tell you what my vote would be?
If resource extraction is so profitable, then it can be done by the companies themselves in return for the royalty holiday they already got.
We've screwed up our priorities really badly already, by allowing our governments to become addicted to natural resources rape. Accountability for sustainable resource extraction is nil, when any government has to look only a maximum of four years into the future.
Let's not compound the error by shorting the stock price of our kids. You can't cover that short with a few bucks down the road.
zalm
2 years ago
Is it just me...
... or is the tone of discourse so much more rational and polite now that BC Boy seems to be on furlough? I haven't seen his monikkker staining the pages for at least 24 hours.
Whew! One can relax now for a few moments with a decent argument without worrying about who's flinging ignorant shit around with wild abandon.