B.C.’s New Democrat government put on a masterclass Thursday in how to spend somebody else’s money while still managing to take all the credit for themselves, trumpeting a major new investment in child-care spaces that appeared to have very little to do with the province at all.
Minister of State for Child Care Mitzi Dean announced 600 new child spots, spread throughout the province, at a press conference in Langford, on Vancouver Island.
“We're going to continue investing in child care,” she said, turning her sights on BC United leader Kevin Falcon and BC Conservative leader John Rustad.
“We know how important it is. The other guys don't. We had a desert of child care here in the West Shore, people had to commute. We want to make sure that the government of British Columbia continues to invest in child care because we know how vital it is.”
Dean stood at a B.C. government podium with a sign “taking action for you.”
But the real force of action was the federal government.
The 600 spaces cost $74.6 million. B.C. pitched in only $10.8 million — barely 14 per cent of the funding.
Not that Dean or her colleague, Langford-Juan de Fuca MLA Ravi Parmar, let on how little the BC NDP had actually contributed to the new spaces. It wasn’t part of the speeches, or the accompanying press release. Nor did either MLA share the stage with any federal officials, who were shut out of the back-patting exercise.
Instead, Parmar and Dean hogged the limelight for the BC NDP.
Then, Parmar used it to let loose an attack against Rustad, saying the Conservative leader doesn’t support child care the way New Democrats do.
Alas, it’s not quite the devastating attack line Parmar thinks it is.
If what he meant is that no other political parties have spent seven years and billions of dollars promising a $10-a-day child-care system, utterly failing to deliver it, and are now announcing random numbers of child-care spaces in random locations without putting almost any provincial money on the table as they let other levels of government do the heavy financial lifting: Well, sure.
But, it’s not like that’s a record to be proud of.
Thursday’s announcement was a classic example of the political drift of the BC NDP in year seven of power.
It’s as if the party has forgotten how important the $10-a-day promise was to winning (despite technically losing) the 2017 election campaign.
Perhaps it lacks the institutional memory of how John Horgan whipped up public support for affordable child care. Or maybe it thinks, since then, British Columbians have grown to love the complicated system of income-based affordability benefits, fee reduction applications and mountains of paperwork that define the convoluted web of what is decidedly-not-$10-a-day child-care system.
Whatever the case, only 10 per cent of child-care spaces in B.C. are true $10-a-day spots.
That’s an embarrassing figure for a government that made it a marquee promise in two election campaigns.
There’s some rumblings Premier David Eby will pivot the whole exercise into an election promise of having child care moved into, and built alongside, B.C. schools.
It would be a smart move, and convenient for parents. But much like when the NDP pitched $10-a-day in the 2017 campaign, voters should also ask: Can this party actually deliver on any more child-care promises? So far, based on the track record, the answer is no.
Rob Shaw has spent more than 16 years covering B.C. politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for Glacier Media. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast Political Capital, and a regular guest on CBC Radio.
