'The majority of people have children in unlicensed care. That’s the reality of British Columbia. That’s why we are providing the supports for unlicensed care to become licensed,' Finance Minister Carole James said on Wednesday.John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail
The B.C. government and daycare advocates are hoping unlicensed child-care operators will choose to get licensed to benefit from the province's $1-billion investment in publicly funded care announced in this week's budget.
The NDP ran in the 2017 provincial-election campaign on a commitment to $10-a-day daycare, but has since pivoted to a pledge to bring in "universal" child care. That includes subsidies to operators to cut costs to parents, and training more early-childhood educators to create 22,000 new child-care spaces in the next three years.
The NDP is describing the program as a decade-long initiative. The budget does not mention $10-a-day daycare.
"The majority of people have children in unlicensed care. That's the reality of British Columbia. That's why we are providing the supports for unlicensed care to become licensed," Finance Minister Carole James said Wednesday.
"Many providers have told us that with a little bit of support for equipment or training, they would be ready to move to licensed care. We expect a number of providers to want to move to licensed care."
There has been a sense of urgency around the unlicensed-versus-licensed issue prompted, in part, by the death of 15-month-old Macallan Wayne Saini at an East Vancouver daycare operation in January, 2017. The child died in an accident at the operation, which the Vancouver Coastal Health authority concluded was operating illegally.
The NDP is putting up a pair of benefits to ease child-care costs. While one benefit will go to licensed or unlicensed operators, the second program – funding of between $60 a month and $350 a month depending on the age of the child – will only go to licensed operators.
According to current provincial government rules, licensed child care provides care for three or more children. Operators must meet specific requirements for health and safety, staffing qualifications, space and equipment and other standards. The operations are monitored and inspected by the regional health authority.
But there are also provisions for unlicensed or "licence-not-required" child-care providers who may care for only two children or a sibling group not related to them. According to a government website, they may be operating illegally if they care for more than the allowed number of children.
Government and child-care advocates contacted Wednesday said there are no hard numbers on how many such unlicensed operations there are.
BC Liberal MLA Laurie Throness, the child-care critic, was skeptical Wednesday about the government's plans. In an e-mail exchange, he wrote that the government is "using a crafty carrot-and-stick approach" to drive unlicensed child care into its "big-government public regime."
Mr. Throness wrote that providers may not be seeking to license earlier "because of the significant costs to licensing" including fees, modifications to the family home and yard, record keeping, inspections and other measures.
Before being defeated in a confidence vote last summer by the NDP and Greens, the BC Liberal government had proposed to spend $1-billion over four years to create an additional 60,000 child-care spaces.
Iglika Ivanova, a senior economist with the B.C. office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said Wednesday the shift to more licensed care is key to the government's efforts to pay for quality care.
"If you're concerned with the quality of the care, you need to incentivize licensed care. I am sure some of the unlicensed providers are amazing. It's just [that] there are no guarantees, no monitoring. If you are going to design public policy, which is what we're talking about here, you need to design mechanisms to ensure the public dollars we are spending are going towards quality services."
Sharon Gregson, an advocate for $10-a-day daycare associated with the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC, said she expected some unlicensed child-care operators might wait to see how the system shifts in the months and years ahead before seeking licensing. Others may not wait.
"Some unlicensed caregivers might be ready, willing and able to make the transition immediately," she said.
Ian Bailey