B.C. Budget 2021: What does it mean for child care? 

As you may know, B.C. Budget 2021 was announced late last month. Despite there being some steps forward in child care, overall this provincial budget fell short in accelerating plans for making quality, affordable, accessible and universal child care a reality.

As outlined in our union's budget analysis there were several missed opportunities in this budget, and some of the more important – and obvious – places in which the government failed to act include the following:

New Spaces  

The current budget states that investments over the past three years have now funded 26,000 new child care spaces in B.C. However, there is still some confusion over the new spaces, and the new spaces fall short for the needs of working families. (There remains a chronic shortage of child care spaces across B.C.) In addition, we need to ensure that public funds are used to build public assets. 
 
It should also be noted that while new spaces are a step in the right direction, it is critical to focus on the professional workforce: enacting a standardized compensation package – including a provincial wage grid, health benefits, and pension plan – is a crucial first step in retaining and recruiting qualified and experienced professionals to the sector.
 
$10/Day Program  

We were pleased to see an expansion of the $10/Day pilot program, adding 75 new prototype sites and 3,750 new low-cost spaces. Unfortunately, these are modest expansions to the program that are quite small to begin with. The changes are therefore expected to have only a very limited impact on extending affordable care to the tens of thousands of families in B.C. who still need access to a better system. 
 
Compensation  

A $2 per hour wage increase for registered early childhood educators (ECE)-now doubling the enhancement to $4 per hour-is unlikely to benefit workers in the sector evenly and/or equitably. Although a welcome improvement, the move is not anticipated to have a significant effect on recruitment and retention across the sector and it falls short of what we expected.
 
Our concerns include:

• Adding $4 per hour to a wage rate that differs across the child care sector only exacerbates the wage disparity
• Wage enhancement is short-sighted and is only guaranteed as long as we have a government that supports universal child care 
• Wages are only a portion of compensation – there were no improvements to benefits, sick leave, vacation, other paid leaves and retirement savings, to name a few. We need a standard compensation plan that attracts workers (i.e., a bump in pay is good, but it needs to be tied to a provincial wage grid with a broader compensation package) 
• How does a $4 per hour increase attract workers into the sector where there is a deficit in the workforce? E.g. There are child care programs licensed for 25 spaces but because of staffing, they are only able to have 16 children? 

 
The absence of school-age programs  

This budget does not cover school-age programs – there was no mention about our members who work in these programs who also play a vital role in supporting working families. 
 
In Summary 
 
Despite there being some improvements, it is clear that the province needs make good on their promises in order to see real success in implementing a universal quality, affordable child care system for British Columbians. And always, at the heart of that system must be supported, valued and fairly compensated child care professionals.

UWU/MoveUP