You can hardly tell by their actions. BC did introduce full-day kindergarten in some communities this fall, but other than that the family policy front has been rather quiet lately.

The latest childhood vulnerability numbers won’t tip you off either as vulnerability has grown over the last decade, reaching 30.3% in 2009/10.

Don’t get me wrong. Setting goals is an significant first step and the government should be commended for taking a stand on this important issue.

However, without changing policy and taking action goals remain nothing more than laudable aspirations.

This is precisely the point that the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) at UBC makes with their new BC Smart Policy Report Card, released earlier in September. The report card assesses government actions in the area of family policy and compares them to benchmark recommendations developed by HELP in their 15 by 15 report, which was commissioned by the BC Business Council last year.

The findings? There has been some movement on the family policy front over the past year, but the BC government has only made about 5% of the recommended new investments in family policy. At this rate, the researchers estimate that it would take 20 years to reduce early childhood vulnerability to 15%, or 15 years longer than the government’s stated goal of “15 by 15.” It seems that the provincial government is well on its way of failing to achieve their goal unless they take decisive action on family policy and soon.

Many would have been satisfied to end it here with calling current government family policy a failure and making a call for bolder action. But HELP’s report card moves beyond name calling and assigning failing grades to analyze what it would take for smart family policy changes to be implemented.

HELP researchers recognize that politicians are rarely leaders; they follow what they perceive to be the popular mood among their constituents. So HELP’s report card looks beyond the need for political leadership and explores the role of the broader community in pushing for increased investments in smart family policy. Here’s their read on where the broader community is at and where it needs to be:

HELP’s recommendations for moving forward? An broad-based, frank discussion about priorities and trade offs around family policy.

British Columbians need to talk about how to find new funding or reallocate existing dollars in order to invest in the social and economic benefits that smart family policy will promote.

HELP researchers end their report card with an appeal to all British Columbians to take responsibility for changing the status quo:

Please start talking about [the key questions and trade offs] at your dinner tables, among your neighbours, in your offices and with your political leaders.

I fully agree that starting the conversation is how we move forward. So why not start by posting a comment here on the blog and, as I’ve noted before, by participating in the 2011 BC Provincial Budget Consultation?

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.

From a purely macroeconomic standpoint, any government spending is better than none in the midst of a recession as it will boost the economy in the short term. In the long term, however, the best use of government borrowing is to finance investments that will bridge our current economic needs with long-term social and environmental goals. Think investments that leave us with healthier and better educated citizens, that increase long-term productivity and set us up for the “green” economy of the future, while also increasing the quality of life for all people.

It’s here where the current government policy leaves a lot to be desired. We would be better off running higher deficits and making these public investments now, than running smaller deficits and having to pay them off with a less productive economy in the future. Let’s not forget that public dollars can be invested in initiatives that will have long-lasting benefits for said future generations.

According to a new study by UBC’s Human Early Learning Partnership, just under 30% of BC children entering kindergarten are “developmentally vulnerable” (read, not ready to learn), and the resulting depletion of human capital is estimated to cause BC to forgo about 20% of GDP growth over the next 60 years, a value equivalent to investing $401.5 billion today at a rate of 3.5% interest (for more details, see this Vancouver Sun article).

By failing to make public investments now to eliminate child poverty and ensure that our children grow up healthy and have access to good quality education, we are wasting our children’s potential and leaving them with a less productive economy in the future. Yes, making these investments will cost money and increase the government debt, but at this point leaving debt to our children seems far preferable to the alternative of saddling them with the (often very expensive) consequences of our unresolved social and environmental problems.

There is, however, a type of debt that we should not leave to future generations. It’s the debt incurred from hosting lavish parties for ourselves (Olympics, anyone?) or creating wealth by destroying the environment (through subsidizing natural gas extraction, for example).

Increasing government debt in itself is not as large a problem as some of the recent media coverage would suggest, but both BC and Canada’s governments could and should be making better spending choices.

Well, the Early Childhood Learning Agency — the one that was established in the spring of 2008 to study the feasibility and costs of expanding kindergarten to a full day for 5-year-olds — concluded that expanding early learning programs in BC is both desirable and feasible. It did indeed recommend a gradual expansion of full-day programs for 3- to 5-year-olds. So far so good.

However, in its final report, Expanded Early Learning in British Columbia for Children Age Three to Five, the Agency estimated the total operating costs to about $130 million per year for full day K for 5-year-olds once fully implemented. That is to say that it would cost more to get the system going (it always does).

The BC government has budgeted $44 million in 2010/11 when half of BC 5-year-olds are expected to be covered by the program and $107 million in 2011/12 when the program is planned to cover all 5-year-olds. These amounts come to 34% and 82% of the annual operating costs estimated by the Early Childhood Learning Agency. And that’s during the two years that the program will be set up, when facilities need to be found, new teachers/early childhood educators recruited and curriculum and program standards developed. This just doesn’t add up.

Not to mention that no funding is provided in this fiscal year to enable the Ministry of Education to prepare for these programs by undertaking the next steps recommended by the Early Childhood Learning Agency:

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

If the government’s own report is to be believed, then the budgeted amounts for all-day-kindergarten are too low to start up a good quality program.

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.

In urban areas like Vancouver and Victoria, childcare fees can account for 20 percent of families’ total expenses—the second highest cost after housing. A Vancouver family with a four-year-old child in full-time childcare and a seven-year-old child in after-school care will pay at least $982 a month or $11,784 a year for childcare.

A large Vancouver-based childcare provider reports that without a significant increase in provincial funding, next year fees could be as high as $1,000 a month for three- to five-year-old children

But this is not just an urban issue. From 2001 to 2006, annual child-care fees for preschool-aged children in B.C. went up by $672. For school-aged care, the increase was more than $800.

The crisis doesn’t stop there. There still aren’t enough quality spaces.

Wait lists for quality childcare are years long. Only 14 percent of B.C. children under the age of 12 have access to a licensed childcare space. Despite government’s claims that they are creating new spaces, this is only a two percent increase since 2001 and still falls far short of the need.

And, low wages have created a staffing crisis in child care.

A recent survey of B.C.’s early childhood educators reports that almost half of these college-trained professionals earn less than $16 an hour. This includes people with 20 years experience in the field.

The B.C. childcare crisis didn’t fall from the sky. The seeds were planted in 2002 when the newly elected provincial government scrapped the $7-a-day school-aged childcare program that funded 15,000 affordable, quality spaces and cancelled plans to extend funding to care for other age groups.

Then, the government cut $40 million from its own childcare budget. These dollars were only replaced when the federal government transferred funds to B.C. that could only be spent on child care. The reality is that B.C. is spending fewer provincial dollars on childcare than in 2001.

As a result, long-time providers are teetering on the brink of closing their doors because of lack of funding. The tragic irony is that despite demand, not all spaces are filled because parents cannot afford the high fees.

It is children and families who pay the price. Some children have already lost their only chance to get a good early start. In fact, the number of children entering kindergarten who are vulnerable went up in B.C. over the last nine years.

Communities also paid the price as they were unable to attract and keep young families or fill vacant jobs because of the lack of quality, affordable child care.

Rather than implement a plan with targets and timelines for meeting B.C.’s child-care needs, the government held out the promise of all-day kindergarten but backed away because of the cost. Even this stalled initiative ignored the childcare needs of the majority of B.C. families who need full time early care and learning so that they can work.

The good news is that there are solutions. Other developed countries have systems that meet children’s developmental needs and the needs of working families. Shamefully, Canada ranks last amongst developed countries on our investment in child care.

This provincial election is an ideal time to put this issue front and centre on every party’s agenda and to find solutions for B.C.

B.C. families are looking for candidates who are committed to solving the crisis. They are looking for candidates who understand that investment in childcare is an essential part of an economic recovery strategy. It creates jobs for women and men, helps families during stressful times, and promotes healthy child development which reduces costs down the road.

For any enlightened politician, it should be a no-brainer. This election, let’s make sure that it gets done!

(First published in www.straight.com, april 28/09)

Recall that in 2006, the new federal government canceled the Agreement on Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) with the provinces, and introduced the so-called “Universal Child Care Benefit” of $100 per month for children under 6 years old. (Of course, the UCCB is treated as taxable income, so the real benefit is less than $100 per month, depending on your tax rate.) In early 2007, the BC government responded by announcing (needlessly, of course) that provincial child care program funding would be cut by almost 15% (or between $35 – $40 million a year). For my daughter’s daycare, this translated into a loss of $2 per child per day in operating grants. So they have been forced to increase fees ever since.

A real universal child care plan –– one that increases spaces, assures affordable fees, and pays early childhood educators a living wage –– remains far preferable.

For more background on recent cuts to federal and provincial child care funding, check out the website of the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC.

And while we’re at it, how about a commitment to an affordable, universal child care program ala Quebec, so more parents, especially women, can join or stay in the workforce?

These would be two of the best investments and economic recovery policies, if we’re thinking long term. Any takers candidates?

A policy to make sure all government contractors pay a living wage to their employees would mean hundreds of parents could afford to afford have just one job, rather than running between 2 and even 3 jobs, and never having time to see their children.

Families want the dignity to buy their own shoes. They should be able to. Income inequality is growing and charity isn’t the answer.

But, to stimulate the economy, surely we need to invest in both social and physical infrastructure. Lets take child care as an example. A provincial commitment in tomorrow’s budget to begin building a universal, quality publicly funded child care system will create construction jobs – just like other traditional infrastructure investments. But, it will also create jobs for women - who are the overwhelming majority of BC’s early childhood educators. nvestment in child care will also make it possible for parents to work or go to school to train or retrain. And, most importantly, an investment in child care will support children’s development – something that is even more important now that families are stretched and stressed. 

I can’t think of a better way to stimulate the economy and build strong communities.  Can you?