Welcome to the new world

Working parents, lack of child care; we are reaping the whirlwind of discontent.

In BC, we treat children terribly, 3rd rate consumers at best. Education is failing, lack of alternative activities, etc., will spell doom for future generations.

The government, you know the guys who want massive pay rises, scrimp and cheat children out of their birthright. 42.5 billion for RAV and piss all for kids or $800 million for LRT on Arbutus $200 million for children and still $1.5 billion left over. no wonder kids are killing kids, no wonder they are doing drugs, no wonder, we treat children as losers from the day they are born.

"As ye sows, so shall ye reap."

OOPs

Should read - $2.5 billion for RAV

More Lobbying

According to the latest census figures there are 286,009 families (including single) with children at home. Even if you allow for an extra 50,000 to figures for 'women only' households, the total number is closer to 190,000 rather than the 358,000 estimated in the article. That's almost 50% less than stated! Take the other figures cited and they seem to be saying that the current beneficiaries receive $17,565 per year each.

BC Stats also tells us that 2.8 million of a total BC population of 4.2 million is receiving Social Assistance or EI benefits. That's more than 50% of the population.

Seems like that for those getting money from the government these are indeed the 'good old days'.

No wonder BC has perhaps the longest life expectancy numbers in the world.

Its quite funny...

Its funny, no one ever blames the irresponsible couple for havign a child they can't afford, or the irresponsible A-hole deadbeat dad for making his wife a single mom with kids to raise on her own. Instead we blame the government for not providing childcare.

R/Man

You need to do your sums again, a lot more carefully.

The population of BC (age 19 - 64) for which BC Stats provides information (latest month available is December 2006) is 2,795,680.

Of that population the number of individuals who were receiving Social assistance or Employment Insurance in December of 2006 was a total of 110,938. That is less than 4% my friend

So, what in the world are you drinking?

The data is here: http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/lss/iaui/iaui3.pdf

Realisticman

The article talks about children 12 and under, not children at home. When you wrote about children at home I presume you mean school-aged (5 and older) don't count.

Children 12 and younger are not to be left home alone; in fact, it is illegal. Therefore, all children, 12 and under, when not in school require supervision. My wife and I work and we had to pay $5.50 an hour for quality supervision/care for our youngest child a couple of years ago. It gets expensive.

A tangent:
Just imagine how much money a teacher could make if he or she provided day care for 20-30 children at $5.50 an hour. I am not complaining about the rate, either: one generally gets what one pays for (unless Grandma is around - which is becoming more and more unlikely). Traditionally, women have taken care of children and they have been underpaid for the services they have been providing. It is time their work was recognised.

It's not about blame

You can lay blame wherever you want, but perhaps addressing the needs of kids already disadvantaged by the situations you describe is a better long-term solution than making them pay for the mistakes of their parents?

Subsidizing child-care is a lot cheaper than paying for the problems that come with kids that end up making poor choices.

A European solution

Maybe we should start kindergarten at 4 years old and grade 1 at 5.

Elementary school should then go to grade 8 and then we should have a grade 13, which would be equivalent to 1st year university, technical school, or apprenticeship.

More school = less time for daycare and a better education to boot!

Childcare Cost - $5.50 per day

Public school teachers do not get 5.50 a day per kid because school funding also pays for infrastructure. When you pay for out of home child care you pay for the building,electricity for the lights e.i., cpp, any other wage enhancements, and supplies for the kids. Much of that cost is dictated by childcare regulations and caps on the kid/childcare worker ratios. In infant toddler care for babies under twenty four months it is capped at four babies per adult. If each baby's parent pays $1000/month that give a day care operator $4000 for wages, insurance, building costs, supplies, and incidentals. The caps range up to eight kids per adult for older kids. The regulations run over 100 pages and $5.50 is a heck of a deal in some respects. Please know that most operators recieve a daily supplement per child from the porvince to keep the doors open. Very often this government supplement is their only profit. Currently that supplement goes only to daycares established before the Martin agreement. The BC gov denied supplement funding to any new daycares that come on line since that agreement fell through. Don't just blame the Tories. There are a great number of working parents receiving full child care subsidy (the poorest of the poor) to whom that $100 a month has made a material difference.

I know it is a hard decision to make, I have five kids (who I can afford) age eight and under. I work from home. Child care is one of the most fraught decisions any parent makes.

numbers

Actually, this story is easy on the facts. Ask someone in the profession. Their pay is an embarassment. Considering the character of a child is formed by the age of 5, this cheapness will come back with a venegence. Funds allocated for children never reach them...Campbell and Taylor are politicians on a private pension with absolutely no values. They imagine a world of no consequences...maybe because they'll retire elsewhere, like Hawaii? The cheapness of our government for families in need is such old and manipulated news, it isn't even an issue anymore. But you can get $400 a week for 40 weeks to easier start a personalized fortune cookie business. Only in Canada.

Only the selfish and morally backward oppose affordable daycare

It amazes me that selfish reactionaries like IAMC will scream in favor of projects where we spend billions sending troops halfway around the world to kill people, yet using tax money to provide affordable daycare so that parents can be more productive, and children well taken care of, would be some form of moral disaster.

IAMC selfish pricks like you have to start getting used to the fact that you live in a civilization where people work together collectively to create what we have. No one is an island. You don't want your tax dollars used to provide care for children?, Then go move to Afghanistan where you can see the tax dollars you like to see spent at work. Yes we are a privileged society in comparison to the vast majority of the world, but that privilege is far too often used for the wrong things.

In the parlance of economics, investing in the care children is a far wiser use of tax dollars than killing someone else's. Proper affordable daycare strengthens our society in the long run, it enables parents more time to participate economically, providing a better living for their families, as well as adding to the tax base. It's a win, win outcome. The only reason for opposing it, is because its success sheds light on the lies and failures of your neoconservative moral abstractions.

I said, $5.50 per hour (not day)

that's about $5.5 x 6 hours = $33/day
$33 x 25 students (typical classroom) = $825/day x 192 days (school year) = $158,000 per school year.

$33 x 30 x 192 = $190,000 /year for 30 students (the generally accepted maximum that often gets fudged because the principal discussed it with the teacher - who may not have agreed it was a good idea). This is similar to what it costs the MOE/taxpayer to teach students in public schools. Therefore, school is not cheaper than daycare - even at $5.50 per hour, but daycare's don't have the duty to teach (though the good ones generally do some amount of this).

At $1000/month for quality daycare one gets $1000 x 30 x 10 months, or $300,000 per year - the amount of capital that could be generated by one teacher of one room with 30 kids. At this rate, schools would be rich - they could nearly double the number of teachers and assistants and offer quality education; but, like Bobbi pointed out, day-cares are are capped at 4-8 children per adult depending upon the age of the child. They ain't gettin' rich either. If I remember correctly, some private schools in BC charge as much as $30,000/student for 10 months of instruction - now that's rolling in the dough!

correction

*daycare's = daycares

looking forward

I believe this is an issue, where all the old cliches of mutual blaming and recrimination and so on is out of place.

The one thing we ought to ask here is: What do we want for the future of this country?

Then we might take a look at the world statistics, find out which countries are doing better in respects we consider important, see what they are doing different, and then we could try to shift our policies and priorities in that direction. Is that not the essence of consulting services, isn't that what they do, and all that is needed here is some solid research, where the needed data are in the public domain!

Instead, we sink down in mudslinging, blaming games, and reinventing the wheel. Are we already way into the swamps of losing the grip on our civilization? As someone said: No wonder kids are killing kids. What a shining role model we are providing for them. Maybe we should elect Dr. Phil for our next premier. He might do some good.

On the funny note: My household goods are not exactly miles away from the Cuban scenario, except I had to pay for mine, but my kids were in scouts for years and never went on a hike with boots that fit them less than perfectly, although sometimes it took seven visits to new-and-old sporting goods stores. It's all about priorities.

StrongStart

The StrongStart centres that the province is trying to set up in every school district are a really good indicator of what the BC Liberal's philosophy on child-care is. These centres require a caregiver to accompany the child to participate in the program. So, the only children that can participate at these programs are ones that have a stay at home parent or nanny. IT ISN'T CHILDCARE AT ALL!

Maybe Christy Clark could bring her child to work (I always wondered if she declared the room that was set aside for her in the legislature as a taxable benefit), but as far as the BC Liberals are concerned, everyone else's childcare is completely in the hands of the parents. Why should they help? They'll provide learning experiences for only those children who have parents wealthy enough to be one income families.

Facts in this article don't say much

This doesn't tell us anything. What did we get less of? Consulting reports? Less real dollars to families? Money allocated to other ministries for child care programs? It's impossible to tell from this.

Why not tell us what the subsidy criteria is? "Perhaps" simply leaves this an open question and doesn't add to the argument.

The tone of this article is that all families with working mothers should get government assistance. Universal assistance means the money has to come from taxes from those same working mothers. Why not leave it in their pockets and keep the bureaucracy to a reasonable level, and give the money to those that need it most.

Do some better digging into the facts. You might be right, be we really don't know based on this article.

chidcare money from feds

That small amount of money that the feds have sent out to parents for them to purchase childcare is taxable income. This will go on top of whatever other income they have so I can only imagine it being taxed at the upper end - I wouldn't doubt that it doesn't through some families into the next tax bracket - essentially making the money more expensive than if they had never received it.

IAMC

That we are -- but we live in Canada, not in Cuba, or East Timor, or Somalia:
http://www.aneki.com/poorest.html
We would indeed be rich, if we could spend in a year what the people of these countries spend in a year, yet make what we make. So your comparison is incorrect at best, and damn stupid at worst.

Here, have a read:
Gap between rich, poor still growing: StatsCan
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070503/statscan_income_070503/20070503?hub=TopStories

http://www.statcan.ca/cgi-bin/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=3889&lang=en&db=IMDB&dbg=f&adm=8&dis=2

If you want a more accurate comparison, then contrast the Downtown East Side with The British Properties in Vancouver. But then, accuracy really isn't your strong point.......

Contrasts

I wonder what Rickie is getting at? I'm frequently in the Downtown East Side and I don't see anyone that looks hungry. I see people emaciated and stoned stupid. In the British Properties I don't see many people but then again who's happiest?

After reading Ricks links the one that confirms that Canada is doing well is this annual income figure,"For single moms it was $22,200 -- virtually unchanged from the year previous, but a major increase from 1996 when it hit a 25-year low of $8,600.".

realisticman (aka "idiot")

People like you are always telling OTHER people when they've made enough. And average $22 grand is good to you.......?
Read this little exercise:
Average CEOP "wages" is 450 times the workers. So 450 workers making $10 + ONE CEO making $4500 = 451 people making $9000. Why that's an average of $19.96! Those workers (without doing a blessed thing) just got themselves an average 100% raise!

Jeez but times are good in Canada, eh?

Almost triple

Just citing the figures on your link Rick, that tells us that single mothers are netting almost triple what they were 10 years ago.

R/man

I guess you've forgotten the central findings of this research by Armine Yalnizyan.

http://policyalternatives.ca/documents/National_Office_Pubs/2007/The_Rich_and_the_Rest_of_Us.pdf

Perhaps it is time you read it again, this time a little more carefully. Remember that ‘80% of families’ and what this economy means for them. Then you won't ask such silly questions. Particularly in a city where it requires nearly 70% of pre-tax income to meet the average wage earner’s housing needs.

By some measures things look better, but in fact (and as oil prices increase this will become more and more true) they are far worse. Times are not good.

In fact, quite the contrary: The disconnect between blind and self-centered elites and the majority has only been further underscored by the recent report on MLA remuneration which, according to a poll I saw, got a negative review by about 67% of respondents.

Thumb's up, G West!

I didn't have the patience to do the due diligence with the r/man.

I even heard that, in the land of milk and honey (aka Alberta) people (that is to say, the hoi polloi) are feeling the heat..........

RickW

Continually running on an accelerating treadmill eventually leads to exhaustion and collapse.

The majority is getting to that point very rapidly and many minorities have already fallen off.

Instead of a response from our government, we hear that Campbell will join Lance Armstrong in September and don bicycle shorts in a 'ride for cancer'. Meanwhile he and his corporate vice-presidents dissemble and duck questions in the Legislature at the same time that they tell us about the 'personal sacrifices' they are making for all British Columbians.

Anyone who tells you he or she is 'making a sacrifice' isn't.

Someone should contact Lance and let him know whom he will be riding with.