Excerpts from the document:
Extensive research shows that to have healthy communities and a healthy economy, families must be able to access affordable, high quality, child care.
In 2005/06, we urge the BC Government to:
1. Implement a five year plan for a publicly funded child care system that entitles all BC children from birth to twelve years, access to a range of inclusive child care choices in licensed family and centre-based child care programs.
2. Establish a provincial framework with accountability measures that ensure:
- affordable child care for families;
- adequate operating funding to match the real costs of meeting the diverse needs of BC's children and families;
- sufficient resources to enable inclusion of children with special needs; and
- adequate and fair compensation for child care workers that reflect the level of training, responsibility and value of work performed.
3. Reinvest the $42 million (Public Funding for Child Care in BC, June 2004,YWCA Canada,
L. Anderson) in provincial funding that your government cut from prior child care spending, ensure adequate funding for inclusion in licensed child care programs through Supported Child Care and stabilize BC's provincial spending on child care.
4. Ensure government funding using a fair share of the federal funds in the Early Childhood Development Initiative to support child care as the cornerstone of BC's early childhood strategy and designate the federal funds from the Multilateral Framework to supplement, not replace, BC's own spending on child care.