On the other hand, social psychologists like Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo have shown how situations can override a person’s usual inclinations and cause them to do something which they would normally abhor, such as killing other people in wartime.

Our understanding of human behaviour has grown dramatically with the development of neuroscience. Many of my future posts will consider what these discoveries tell us about creating healthy human beings, and healthy societies.

Of course, these are very political questions.

One key concept is that of  “outside-inside” (in the words of psychologist Arthur Janov). We tend to internalize what we experience in our environments. Food and air, for instance, are obvious examples. It matters whether our food and air are clean or if they are polluted with various toxins.

A second key concept is “neuroplasticity.”  Neuroscience has shown that our brains are not static and unchanging. For instance, every thought and feeling in our minds corresponds to a physical change in our brains. Learn something new, and your brain changes.

In other words, every experience in our lives alters our brain.

A third element are the so-called “mirror-neurons,” which are a fundamental to our “social brain” (Dr. Dan Siegel). In brief, these neurons fire in our brains when we observe the feelings of others. In fact, we absorb the feelings of other people so much that Siegel suggested that we call them “sponge neurons.”

Finally, people tend to absorb the dominant values and beliefs of their culture, including its political ideology. Marx wrote that the ideas of the ruling class are the dominant ideas of society, and Gramsci elaborated on the concept of this ideological hegemony.

As political scientist Gary Olson wrote in Capitalism Short Circuits Our Moral Hard-Wiring, “Capitalists maintain domination, in part, through subtly but actively creating society’s prevailing cultural norms.”

Our brains as well as our beliefs are shaped, more than we realize, by the ideology of capitalism, with its emphasis on greed, selfishness, competition and individualism.

In the words of  Frans B.M. de Waal, “You need to indoctrinate empathy out of people in order to arrive at extreme capitalist positions.”

These norms and expectations often overrule our natural compassion, even though it is now clear that “the human brain is hard-wired for empathy,” in Olson’s view.

Finally, research has shown that poverty (e.g. stress, overwork, poor nutrition) take a terrible toll, not only on adults, but children, and even babies in the womb. Not only is physical health damaged, but emotional and intellectual health suffer.

We need to go beyond these symptoms and address the root causes of human suffering.

The study, Global Employment Trends for Youth, outlines the devastating impact the recession has had on young people worldwide.  More than 80 million people aged 15 to 24 were unemployed at the end of 2009, the highest number ever recorded.

The impact of this is felt differently in the developed and the developing world.  Here in British Columbia the August 6, 2010 Labour Force Report from Statistics Canada shows young people have not escaped the ravages of recession.

The Stats Can report describes British Columbia as a good news story saying:

British Columbia posted gains [in employment] of 16,000 in July, bringing the province’s unemployment rate down 0.3 percentage points to 7.5%.

However, reading along further in the report shows that since 12 months ago while employment has gone up by 3 per cent for the whole population, it has gone down by 1.8 per cent for people between 15 and 24.  Although many young people are school age, as a group they are more than twice as likely to be working part-time.

Happily, unemployment has fallen among young people but in spite of this “recovery” while the population of young people has gone up by 3,400 there are still 6,000 fewer young people working now than a year ago.

The ILO report suggests there are long term consequences for coming of age during a recession:

Given the possible transition mechanisms between business cycles and youth employment, what are the potential costs in terms of future consequences for the youth who are unlucky enough to reach maturity at a time of economic crisis? A body of literature now exists on the topic of “scarring”. The premise is that there are longer-term consequences for young people whose first labour market experience is one of unemployment. Presumably, the unemployed youth will lower his reservation wage with the passage of time, and accept poorer quality jobs that are less secure, and thus, be more vulnerable to future spells of unemployment (the disorderly transition mentioned above). Results are mixed in terms of the existing analyses, with stronger evidence to support wage scarring than the unemployment scarring argument; for example, a recent study by Kahn estimated that a 1 percentage point increase in unemployment in the United States results in a 6 to 7 per cent decrease in the wages of college graduates and that, while the wage cost lessens with time, it still remains statistically significant 15 years later. The effects are believed to be more severe for youth entering the workforce with an education level below the tertiary level.

 What surprises me is how remarkably little attention seems to have been paid to the issue of youth unemployment in this recession.  No effort has been made to make higher education more accessible and less costly.  Virtually nothing has been done to target youth in employment programs.  The ILO report suggests we may see consequences for this inaction.

In his column Dr. Paul Martiquet reports that in BC the minimum age for working a regular job is 12 – the lowest of any jurisdiction in North America.  This resulted from changes in the Employment Standards Act in 2003.  Before that anyone under the age of 16 required permission from the government to work.

Now the Employment Standards Branch no longer keeps track of where children work.  All that is required is the permission of one parent and most parents have little or no knowledge of the dangers on a work site.

WorkSafeBC does keep track of injuries and Dr. Martiquet reported a tenfold increase in injury claims among 12 to 14 year olds between 2005 and 2008.

This is not the first report on increasing injuries among children on the job.  Last October the BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition published a report on the subject.  Cuts are the most common type of injury for children followed strains, dislocations and fractures.  Most of the children are reported to be working in accommodation and food services but some work in genuinely dangerous industries such as agriculture, and construction.

WorkSafeBC told the CBC that the tenfold increase in injured children to 2008 had declined in 2009 to a fivefold increase thanks to the failing economy.  Apparently things were so bad in 2009 employers could no longer afford to hire as many 12 year olds at the $6 sub-minimum wage. 

The news about injured children should not come as a surprise.  In 2004 Helesia Luke and Graeme Moore published a report for the CCPA that looked at the implications of reduced regulation for child labour.  The report looked at education and the exploitation as well as health and safety issues.

Helesia and Moore pointed out that young workers between the ages of 15 and 24 were already far more likely to be injured than other workers for a variety of reasons including inexperience and lack of training.  They concluded:

It is logical to assume that children under 15 will be at least, if not more, affected by the same characteristics that increase the risk of injury to those 15–24. An increase in the number of children working, without an increase in training or supervision, may lead to many more job related injuries, especially when there are no prohibitions against children working in hazardous occupations.

Dr. Martiquet concluded his column with the following: 

It seems strange that children can be used to fill jobs in this way.  Age 12?  Age 13? When will they get to be children?  B.C. should honour the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: the minimum work age should not be lower than the age for finishing compulsory schooling (15 typically), children may do only light work as long as it does not threaten their health, safety or hinder their education and training.

Six provinces now have poverty reduction plans, although most are still fairly new, and therefore we don’t yet have data to tell us what kind of success they are meeting with, the exceptions being Quebec and Newfoundland. What their plans and results tell us is that poverty isn’t inevitable – that policy matters.

The example of Newfoundland is particularly instructive. There, the Conservative government of Danny Williams has made poverty reduction one of its overarching goals. Back in 2004, Newfoundland’s poverty rate was the second highest in Canada after BC’s. It is now 6.5 per cent, the third lowest in Canada. Their plan has led to concrete policy changes: welfare benefit rates have gone up (and were already higher than BC’s relative to the LICO) and they have been indexed (they go up every year according to the CPI); the minimum wage has been increased to $10; and the province followed Quebec and made dental care universal for children.

Ontario now also has a plan. Indeed, their plan is legislated, with a 25% reduction in 5 years. And notably, that legislation, the Ontario Poverty Reduction Act, was passed with unanimous all-party support, one week before BC’s provincial election last May, at the height of the recession. Like Newfoundland, they have a cross-ministerial secretariat, with a lead minister. And their lead minister must present annual progress reports. They have struck a welfare review panel, undertaking a comprehensive review of all the social assistance rates and rules. And they have gone the route of introducing an Ontario Child Tax Credit (like the federal one) worth $1,300 a year (another policy vehicle for increasing the incomes of low-income families, whether their income comes from welfare or paid employment).

More recently, New Brunswick has tabled their plan. The government there has fundamentally altered the tone of the debate, particularly about welfare. They too have legislated their plan in what they call the Economic and Social Inclusion Act. They too have all-party support. They have enacted some very large increases in welfare benefit rates, and indicated that this is only the start. And they have increased and indexed the minimum wage. And they too have a secretariat to coordinate plans.

The key common features of these plans are these:

• They have been advanced with all-party support
• They have specific targets and timelines, which in most cases are embedded in legislation.
• They are comprehensive (meaning they deal with income – both social assistance and other government income supports, as well as measures to boost labour market income; but they also address the social infrastructure on which low and modest income families depend, such as housing, education, child care, and community health care; and they have specific measures to address poverty among those populations where poverty is most acute, such as Aboriginal people, recent immigrants, people with disabilities and metal illness, and single parents).
• They have accountability mechanisms, such as public consultations, funding for independent monitoring groups, and obligations to report annually on progress. A key need is for timeline benchmarks that are frequent enough that a government can be held accountable within the life of each mandate.
• There is a cross-ministry secretariat to coordinate and integrate plans, and to ensure that policies do not act at cross-purposes.

(The preceding was part of my recent presentation to the BC Legislature’s Standing Committee on Children and Youth. For the full presentation, click here

And to join the call for a BC poverty reduction plan, click here

Among the points I raised with the committee: too often this issue gets lost in a fruitless debate about how to measure poverty. The simple truth is that no measure is perfect. But by whatever measure one uses ­­–– the LICO (low-income cut-off) before-tax, the LICO after-tax, or the Market Basket Measure –– BC has the highest overall poverty rate and the highest child poverty rate in Canada. So we need a plan to change this reality.

The point is to pick a consistent measure (or a set of measures), which allows us to monitor progress over time and relative to other jurisdictions.

And when one compares BC’s performance (using either the LICO or the MBM) in this way – relative to the historic norm and relative to others – what emerges is not good.

The poverty and child poverty rates have come down in recent years (at least up to 2007, the last year for which we have data). That is to be expected. Generally, the poverty rate tracks the economic business cycle. For this reason, people are rightly worried that the poverty rate in 2008 and surely in 2009 will go back up (already we know from the annual Hunger Count report that food bank use was back up 15% in 2009 – an early warning).

But even within the data leading up to 2007, there are worrying elements:

• For example, after a near unprecedented period of economic growth, spanning from the end of the recession in the early 1990s to 2007, one would have expected to see much more of a decline in the poverty rate. But that didn’t happen. Instead, by 2007, the overall BC poverty rate (at 11%, using the after-tax LICO) had still not managed to attain the 1989 trough of about 10% reached before the 1990 recession.

• With respect to child poverty, the performance is even less impressive. 1989 was also the year in which the House of Commons resolved to end child poverty by 2000. As we all know, that didn’t happen, and indeed, the national child poverty rate by 2007 saw no progress – we were right back to where we started in 1989. But this masks provincial differences. In fact, most provinces have seen a modest improvement. The national picture is weakened by the fact that only two province saw negative progress in that time – Ontario and BC.  Indeed BC realized the least progress since the House of Commons’ ill-fated resolution, with child poverty increasing by 30 per cent between 1989 and 2007.

• Also, while the national child poverty rate has consistently gone down since the mid 1990s, BC alone saw a disturbing upward spike in the years 2002, 2003 and 2004 (again, you see this using either the LICO or MBM). This is likely a result on welfare policy changes instituted in 2002.

It is instructive to look at how BC does relative to some other provinces, and in particular, relative to Quebec and Newfoundland, as they are the provinces with the longest standing poverty reduction plans.

In many respects, the MBM is a better measure, as it is more reflective of the actual costs of basic goods in each place (such as differences in the cost of housing). However, data only goes back to 2000, and for the first few years, HRSDC was not reliably producing annual updates. But that appears to now be changing.

Importantly, the success in Quebec and Newfoundland isn’t just about an improved economy and job creation. Notably, if one were to look at market income alone, the child poverty rate in both of these places in 2007 was higher than in BC. It is after incorporating government transfers that their poverty rates fall below us. The lesson: government policy makes a difference.

Conversely, when we rely only on the market, economic growth and job creation, the results with respect to poverty reduction are weak. That is what we see in the BC case, where we have recorded very low unemployment in recent years (up to the onset of the recession), but poor progress on child poverty. In BC, the story of child poverty is primarily as low-wage story; 56% of poor children in BC live in households with at least one parent working full-year full-time in the paid labour force.  That’s why a plan needs to address issues such as the minimum wage, employment standards, and a living wage. And that’s why, when we call for a poverty plan, and the response from the Premier is that the government’s goal is to have the lowest unemployment rate that we can – that goal, while laudable, is insufficient.

Last night (April 26), New Westminster City Council voted unanimously to adopt the first municipal Living Wage policy in Canada. They have used the broad definition of the family living wage, developed two years ago by CCPA, First Call and the Victoria Community Council (meaning, modelled on a family of four with two young children), and applied the policy to both direct staff and contractors, which is fantastic, as it means this now sets a national standard/precedent for similar policies/bylaws. Hopefully, other cities will follow soon.

The motion was as follows:

That the City establish a Living Wage Policy that is tied to an hourly rate established each year by the Living Wage for Families Campaign; and,

That the Living Wage policy will apply to both full time and part time employees; and,

That there be no threshold in terms of dollar value of a contract or number of employees; and,

That the policy apply to persons that perform physical work on City premises and properties; and,

That staff bring back information to Council regarding implications of the Living Wage on contracted services.”

It’s a great win for the Metro Vancouver Living Wage for Families campaign (which includes First Call, CCPA, ACORN, HEU, and many others). Special recognition should go to the lead city councillor on this, Jaimie McEvoy, and to BC ACORN which initiated this effort in New West.

As a young woman in Canada, I have not felt discriminated against. Throughout my university career, my gender didn’t seem to matter and professors encouraged me to pursue a PhD and the life of an academic as much as any of my male fellow students. Growing up in Bulgaria was a different story – my own mother stopped me from going to a physics-based high school program at home because she felt that physics in not for women (those were her words). As an electrical engineer herself, she obviously had experienced discrimination and wanted to prevent me from going down that same road.

In Canada, however, I didn’t get any of that. Maybe it’s because I live in Vancouver, but what I hear Canadians tell their girls is that they can grow up to become anything they aspire to — rocket scientists, surgeons or presidents. Many of the young women I meet feel similarly – they feel that they are free to make choices and say they are as much in control of their career paths as their male friends.

Yet, when we look at the numbers, women are not growing up to be rocket scientists, surgeons or presidents. Nurses, teachers and social workers is more like it. Women are woefully underrepresented in “non-traditional” occupations such as high-level management and natural sciences. Even in the public sector, where women make up the majority of the workforce, they’re less likely to hold senior management jobs than men.

Yes, there are some women in leadership positions in areas that were previously closed to our gender in politics, business and academia. But they are few and far between.

So, if young women feel that gender is irrelevant for economic success, then why are women’s average annual earnings for full-time, full-year work in 2007 only 71 .4% of men’s? Why are average hourly wages so different: in January 2010, women got paid on average $20.59 per hour, compared to men’s $24.49? Why do women continue to be overrepresented in low-wage jobs? Over 60% of minimum wage workers are women and the proportion of workers earning under $10 per hour is similar.

It would seem that something happens somewhere along the line between school, when the sky’s the limit, and the demands of real life which pushes women into traditional sectors. The older I get, the more convinced I become that this something is children. Or rather, that it’s the outdated family policy that we have in Canada (and the US) that forces women to choose between motherhood and career or economic success.

Recent studies from the US show that in corporate America, childless women’s earnings are on par with men’s, and the earning discrepancies appear when women start having children. Research by Statistics Canada shows that having children is associated with an earnings loss that persists throughout a woman’s working career. At any given age, women with one child earned about 9% on average than childless women, while those with two children earner 12% less, and those with three or more children earned 20% less. The earning gap was larger for women with higher education than for those who only had high school diplomas. Curiously, this parental penalty does not seem to apply to men – men with children earn more on average than childless men.

The more I dig into the research, the more it seems that women with children earn less because they end up taking years away from work. And the reason that they are often forced to do so is that women remain the primary caregivers for children and we lack the social supports to allow women to work and care at the same time. Changing this would require a concerted effort by governments and the private sector.

What governments have control over is Canada’s family policy, and it is sorely in need of change to catch up to social realities of the 21st century – many women with children work, whether by choice or by necessity, and we need to put in place adequate programs to support these women and their families.

Providing accessible childcare that families can afford is an obvious one. Improving parental leave provisions is another way to improve many women’s lives. Statistics Canada quotes a recent survey showing that 40% of new parents could not take the entire parental leave because their family’s financial situation required them to go back to work. Increasing benefit amounts to reflect costs of living would be a great start.

Employers will also have to adapt, and we’ve already started to see some of that. More and more employers allow flexible working hours, opportunities to work from home and an increased availability of part time work. These are all changes that make it possible for women to care for children without having to completely withdraw from the workforce for years at a time.

Some companies are even in the business of raising awareness that women have not achieved nearly equal representation on the top of organizations both in the private sector and in government. McKinsey & Company is probably the largest and best-known professional services firm that is calling attention to the shortage of women in leadership positions in America’s businesses. Their reports, Women Matter and Women Matter 2, demonstrate some important relationships between the presence of women in corporate leadership roles and the financial performance of organizations and explore why that may be the case. This is a good start, but more work needs to be done.

The need to support women to work and to care would only become more pressing as the population ages and we start to experience labour force shortages. We need the women to fully participate in the labour market, as workers and as decision-makers. Changing family policy and making workplaces more flexible is the way to do it.

So go ahead and continue telling the girls that the sky’s the limit, but let’s also make sure that it’s really true.

Happy international women’s day to all.

The first of these short reports was posted to their website this week.

The report includes a startling finding — not only does BC have the highest child poverty rate, our province has also realized the least progress since the House of Commons’ ill-fated 1989 resolution to end child poverty. Make that negative progress. While most provinces saw a drop in their child poverty rate between 1989 and 2007, only Ontario and BC saw the situation worsen, with BC experiencing the largest increase (of 30%).

Here are the details:

Let’s take a longer-term view of the child poverty statistics and compare poverty rates twenty years ago in 1989 and in 2007.  The year 1989 was the best year of the 1980s for the economy, and the national child poverty rate was 15.3 percent.  It was also the year that the House of Commons voted unanimously to work to end child poverty by the year 2000.

Canada never got anywhere near that goal.  In fact, the national child poverty rate in 2007 was 15 percent.  The year 2007, like 1989, came at the end of a long cycle of economic growth prior to the current recession.

The table shows the poverty rates for Canada and each of the provinces in 1989 and 2007.

CHILD POVERTY RATES IN 1989 AND 2007, CANADA AND ALL PROVINCES
	1989	2007	% CHANGE
Alberta	19.3	11.2	-42%
Prince Edward Island	13.5	8.3	-39%
Newfoundland and Labrador	20.0	13.0	-35%
Saskatchewan	21.9	16.7	-24%
Manitoba	22.7	18.8	-17%
Nova Scotia	16.1	14.9	-7%
New Brunswick	17.9	16.7	-7%
Quebec	16.0	14.9	-7%
CANADA	15.3	15.0	-2%
Ontario	11.9	14.5	+22%
British Columbia	14.5	18.8	+30%
Source: Statistics Canada, Income Trends in Canada  1976 to 2007 (Low Income Cut-Offs Before Taxes)

Eight provinces reported declines in the child poverty rate in this 20 year period, some of which were dramatic.  British Columbia and Ontario were the only provinces that did worse over this time period, with BC the worst by far.  Together, child poverty in these two provinces kept the national child poverty rate from falling significantly.

The provincial government of Ontario recently passed anti-poverty legislation with the unanimous support of the legislature that seeks to reduce the child poverty rate by 25 percent over five years.

That’s why British Columbians should be concerned about a report released earlier this week by the Dieticians of Canada — The Cost of Eating in BC 2009.

Unfortunately, the Dietitian’s report received virtually no media coverage. But it makes a vital point — British Columbians on social assistance and those working for minimum wage cannot afford a healthy diet. For them, meeting the Premier’s great goal is simply out of reach.

Here’s the report in its own words:

Dietitians publish the report to bring attention to the fact that not all British Columbians have enough money to buy healthy food.  While shelter and food costs have risen significantly over the past decade, income assistance rates have remained virtually unchanged and minimum wage, once the highest in the country, has remained at $8.00/hour. For those receiving income assistance or earning minimum wage there simply is not enough money to pay for housing and food, let alone other necessities. Unemployment is up and more people are relying on assistance.  There are too many living in poverty in BC and too many lined up at food banks. Dietitians are calling for the provincial government to take some additional action to address poverty in this province. Other provinces are taking action.  Quebec and Ontario have anti-poverty legislation, while Newfoundland & Labrador, Nova Scotia, Manitoba and New Brunswick all have poverty reduction plans.  Common to them are significant changes to income assistance and increases to minimum wage.

The report contains important calculations, comparing the cost of basic necessities (including a healthy diet), set against the income provided by welfare or a minimum wage job. For example, a family of four on income assistance would need more than 100% of their income for shelter and food alone, leaving nothing for anything else.

The core finding of this report isn’t just of concern to those families caught in this untenable situation. In truth, we all pay for this policy failure. A poor diet means poor health, and we all pick up the tab for that. That’s why the Dietitians have joined the call for a comprehensive poverty reduction plan for BC

It’s hard for me to see friends struggle financially, so I’ve tried to encourage Emily to get a better job. Though she doesn’t have a degree, Emily is bright and a hard worker — she should be able to do better.

But Emily doesn’t want to get a better paying job. There is no point, she tells me, because she’s close to the cut off point of many of the government subsidies she relies on and if she made even $1,000 more per year, she’d lose so much in government benefits that her net income would end up lower.

She’s calculated that she needs to earn thousands of dollars more per year to compensate for the value of the lost benefits and she figures that she can’t get such a job without finishing her degree. Which she can’t afford because her low income doesn’t allow her to save up for school. But she can’t get a higher-paying job to help finance her education because if her income went up she’d lose her childcare subsidy, her housing subsidy and will have to start making payments on her student loans.

It seems like the system is stacked against her.

And she’s not the only one. Many low-income people find themselves in a similar position as the majority of government benefits are targeted to the lowest income categories and phased out quickly as soon as the family’s income gets above the bare minimum. A recently released CCPA brief addresses the problem of benefit “stacking” and presents some possible solutions. You can read more about it here.

It’s a classic case of unintended consequences: policy-makers start with the laudable goal of helping the most needy first and they try to avoid spending scarce resources on those who are able to pay for themselves, but in targeting benefits narrowly to the lowest income families they make it very difficult for people like Emily to break out of the low-wage cycle of economic insecurity. For those who need to obtain further post-secondary education or training to be able to move up, the system becomes a catch-22 when BC’s high tuition fees are taken into account.

Benefit stacking is a real problem in BC and it needs to be considered carefully in the design of all new low-income tax credits and other benefits. I haven’t run the numbers, but my guess is that the new low-income credits the government just introduced in the last budget (the HST credit and the new premium assistance) are only compounding the problem.

These cuts have been devastating to many service delivery agencies and will result in the cancellation of programs that benefit the least fortunate in our society: children growing up in low income families, women at risk of violence, the poor. In a recent news release, the CCPA has called for the government to repeal all the cuts made since the February budget.

Make no mistake: these cuts are made because our provincial government wants to end up with a smaller deficit at the end of the fiscal year, not because we cannot afford to help vulnerable groups during a serious recession. Despite the recession, BC is one of the wealthiest provinces in this country. Our provincial debt is relatively low. We certainly have the capacity to cushion the blow of the economic downturn to the more vulnerable individuals and families among us. But our government is choosing not to.

In fact, in their obsession with minimizing the size of the deficit, our policy-makers are pushing people into further hardship. And those who have to endure the pain are those who can least afford it. Kudos to Bill Good for recognizing this simple fact on his CKNW show this morning.

The savings from reduced government grants to social service agencies are $354 million, a mere 0.9% of the overall $40 billion provincial budget for 2009/10. These cuts could easily have been accommodated in only a slightly higher deficit.

The recession is temporary, and so are the current deficits, but the lost educational opportunities for children would never be recovered. It’s penny wise but pound foolish to cut funding to programs that have already been pared to the bone and that provide services with long-term payoffs.

The government is trying to create the impression that cuts are concentrated among “nice to have” but non-essential programs. This is simply not the case. Many of the initiatives that are now being cut have been set up to fill a need that exists because the government is not providing adequate social services and supports out of its core budget. Literacy initiatives, supports for violence against women and children or seniors’ activity programs that keep people healthy and out of hospitals should not be left to the whim of discretionary grants funding. We need to ask ourselves questions such as whether we prefer to pay for programs that enrich the lives of disadvantaged children as they grow up, or for policing and anti-gang measures a few years in the future.

The secrecy with which these cuts have been implemented is also egregious. Without knowing exactly what is being cut, we cannot evaluate the impact of the cuts, and without openness and transparency it is simply not possible to have an honest public debate about priorities. This is why we’ve launched our own effort to track the cuts and we are asking affected groups or individuals to come forward and share their stories.

In the Liberal government’s first term major cuts were announced with glee but this time it is happening by stealth.  People only find out when friends tell them about a cut, or when a local newspaper picks it up.

And local newspapers are picking up stories about cuts that are just astonishing.  One of the cuts that amazed me most was the elimination of BC’s Books for Babies program. Through the program every baby born in BC was supposed to receive a book bag containing a board book, a CD and information about library and other services in their community.

The program, the Books for Babies website announced, “is one of several initiatives aimed at making British Columbia the most literate jurisdiction in North America by 2010.”  The program was funded by the province with support from business.  Three days after the Budget speech Premier Campbell told CBC radio in an interview that, “Honestly, I think the greatest gains are made with early childhood learning.”

Rhian Piprell, one of the programs champions was quoted in the Peace Arch News agreeing with the Premier. 

“The government has put a lot of money into early learning in schools but I don’t think they are as effective as this inexpensive program because it’s reaching families when they are at their optimum best and wanting to provide opportunities for their babies.

“If you look at a child of seven and look at their reading capacity, you can predict how successful they will be in their 30s, and how healthy they are,” she said.

Honestly.  Cutting a program like Books for Babies.  Sometimes you have to wonder which is more non-functional, their policy judgement or their political judgement.

While being short of money for school athletics — the type of events that marked the beginning of the sports career of many a BC athlete, including Beijing Olympic medalist Carol Huynh — our Ministry of Education apparently had no problem finding $500,000 to fund Olympics promotion in schools through a new Spirit Schools program.

Whether you support the Olympics or you think it’s a giant waste of public money, it’s hard to argue that learning about sports in the classroom and getting to watch them on TV is more valuable than actually having the opportunity to participate in person. Yet this is exactly the message that the Ministry of Education is sending out to school children with their bizarre funding choices.

It seems that many of the cuts we’re seeing are not about tough times and lack of money as much as they are about priorities. And this government’s priorities raise some serious questions.

A new Early Childhood Learning Agency will be established. It will assess the feasibility and costs of full school day kindergarten for five-year-olds. It will also undertake a feasibility study of providing parents with the choice of day-long kindergarten for four-year-olds by 2010, and for three-year-olds by 2012. That report will be completed and released within the year.

If you can’t seem to recall ever hearing about that report, you’re not alone. The report was quietly posted on the BC Ministry of Education website just before Easter this year (a little behind schedule) and left for interested web-surfers to discover for themselves. With no government news release announcing the report completion (that I could find), it’s hardly surprising that it received virtually no media attention. The only mention of the report that I have seen so far is in this article by Pieta Woolley in the online version of the Georgia Straight, and it came almost a month after the report’s release.

This is a pity because the Early Childhood Learning Agency produced an excellent report. Expanded Early Learning in British Columbia for Children Age Three to Five draws on the latest research on early child development and a year-long consultation with parents, childcare providers and other stakeholders to conclude that expanding early learning programs in BC is both desirable and feasible.

The Agency estimated the total operating costs to about $615 million per year for full day programs available to all three, four and five-year-olds. The report recommended that the program be introduced in stages over several years and even outlined next steps for the government to take right away, taking into account the fiscal constraints that the current recession imposes. Next steps include:

1. carrying out a detailed facilities analysis and starting to prepare space for programs;
2. creating a human resource strategy; and
3. developing program standards for full day kindergarten for five-year-olds and pre-kindergarten for four-year-olds

Yet, you won’t find any of the reports’ recommendations reflected in the BC Liberals’ election platform. The closest the current government comes to committing to action is this paragraph on the BC Ministry of Education website:

Based on the findings of the feasibility work and its commitment to expanding early learning, the British Columbia government is still committed to pursuing the vision for full day kindergarten and other enhanced early learning opportunities for our youngest learners as soon as reasonably possible. [emphasis added]

The NDP is not doing much better on the childcare front. Their platform states that they will introduce full day kindergarten for five-year-olds “as finances permit” (where have I heard that before?) and promise to create “targets and timelines to build an affordable, accessible, quality child care system” (but we are left to wonder what these targets and timelines might be).

Both parties have made it clear that childcare and early childhood education are not priorities for them, hiding behind the recession as an excuse. But there is no need to make children wait for quality early learning programs until after the recession. $615 million is not a trivial amount of money, but it is only about 0.3% of provincial GDP and, as a society, we can easily afford it if we make it a priority.

It is not only possible but also desirable to invest in early childhood education in times of recession. Because as Susan Prentice points out in Old Dollars, New Sense: Recent Evidence and Arguments about Child Care Spending, childcare is better seen as “a productive investment instead of an economic drain on the public purse – one that will more than pay for itself in the future.”

As an added benefit in these hard economic times, setting up a universally available province-wide preschool program will create jobs when they are most needed. New classrooms/early learning centres would have to be built, employing construction workers in the process. Additional teachers and early childhood educations will be required to staff the programs, creating jobs (which, incidentally, would be mainly filled by women – a group that has been largely ignored in the government’s stimulus package so far).

What surprises me is that we don’t hear more outraged voices on this issue, considering the large number of people who stand to benefit from an expanded and improved childcare system. Pieta Woolley reminds us that:

Given that about 30.4 percent of British Columbians live in a household with kids 12 or under, the child-care issue theoretically affects more citizens than seniors’ issues (14.6 percent of B.C. is 65 or older), aboriginal issues (4.8 percent of the B.C. population is status), and public transit (4.7 percent take transit to work; all numbers according to the 2006 census).

UBC’s Paul Kershaw, assistant professor of political science, proposes an interesting theory as to why childcare is neglected in this year’s party platforms:

1. The costs scare politicians.
“By today’s standards,” he said, “it’s relatively expensive. And by that I mean we haven’t had to create a new social program in quite some time, as we did having to create health care and unemployment insurance and pensions. These are very expensive programs, but they’ve become normalized so we don’t view them as such. Health case is $15 billion, and childcare is $1.5 billion, so it’s no small chunk of change for any provincial budget. That’s one of the key reasons it’s a hot potato.”

2. Politicians won’t fund health promotion.
“We’re wonderful about treating illness after the fact. We will spend hundreds of thousands—if not millions—to save one preterm baby, but we are very uncomfortable about promoting housing for families with children that is affordable, or making the case that no one goes hungry in our province, or is homeless. Even when you get into the middle class, and childcare is largely a middle class issue, we don’t seem too concerned that we get these kids off to a good start in life. We let parents put together a patchwork of inadequate supports. We could really do so much to promote health if we go it right in the early years.”

3. Feminist arguments are considered fringy by politicians.
“No one wants to talk about gender inequality anymore….Even when both parents work full-time, women shoulder the responsible to shoulder childcare alternatives when regular care falls through, they stay home when the kids are sick. That’s just how houses are making decisions. Just 15 percent of people taking parental leave are men….Public policy seems content to say, women, figure it out yourselves….We are content to burn out women.”

4. The baby boomers are a “Canadian blight”.

“We are unwilling to ask tough questions about generational inequality….This is the generation that has their hands on the levers of power that’s tolerating 30 percent of our school-age population showing up vulnerable. These intergenerational justice questions are getting sidelined, because the dominant question seniors are wanting to ask is how much money is going to be there for me to get that next knee replacement. We need to make sure people are comfortable and cared for, but before we start debating whether people are eligible for three knee replacements, I think we really do want to think about what it means to promote health over the lifecourse and get that part right.”

I find the last point particularly interesting, as it starts raising questions about generational inequality. Can it be that politicians pay more attention to seniors because unlike children, seniors can vote? Consider also that seniors traditionally have high voter turnout rates, much higher than those of young people, the group that includes most parents of young children.

I hope I’m not being too cynical here. But it would be nice if the parties running for election would do something to dispel that cynicism. (if I may borrow from the conclusion of a recent Paul Krugman blog post)

For more excellent coverage on childcare in the election campaign, check out Ms Woolley’s articles Parties mum on time lines for child-care plans, Political parties ignore recent government-written plan for childcare and UBC prof gives four reasons BC isn’t delivering childcare.