Child-care fees cut for B.C. parents Thursday

Months after announcing changes to how much parents will pay for child-care, the savings are officially kicking in.

As of Dec. 1, parents will get a discounted rate for every child they have in a licensed child-care facility. Parents can save as much as $550 per month, per child. Based on a sliding scale, the older the child, the fewer the savings.

Parents with children between the ages of three and five could see reductions of up to $445 a month. Families with children in kindergarten who are registered in before- and after-school care will see monthly reductions of $220 on top of earlier cuts of $100.

B.C.’s Education Minister Jennifer Whiteside says the fee reductions will bring the average daily cost of child care in the province to $21 by the end of the year, down from the previous average of $53 before the government’s child-care initiatives began in 2018.

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Parents don’t need to apply to have their fees reduced, instead, the province is directly funding child-care providers who will give parents a discounted rate.

Although this is good news for many, some feel this should have happened sooner.

Alex Taylor is a father of two who lives in Vancouver. He has two kids, a daughter and son, who are four years old and under, who are both in full-time daycare.

Before today, he explains he and his wife were paying $2,300 for both kids — the same as their rent. With the new changes, they’ll save $1,000 every month.

“I think we’re going to be able to save for the future and get back to saving for a down payment for when the housing market finally crashes here. If it wasn’t so expensive, my wife might have gone back to work sooner,” he said.

The savings will go a long way for them, he adds, and likely many other families, with Taylor admitting this extra money will help prevent them from moving to a cheaper province.

“People can use it to buy food. They can use it for kid’s programs… swimming lessons, soccer, those types of things and it really makes a difference. We’ve been saving for a house for 10 years and it’s not going to happen, but you have to try,” he said. “We’re at the point where our rent [was] set three or four years ago because of rent control — if we got evicted, we would have to leave the province. We have so many friends who’ve left over the past five years… because they can’t afford it.”

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In addition to these changes, Taylor is calling on the province to do even more.

“It’s a lottery to get a daycare spot and we were lucky, and more money needs to be provided for supply, for quality teaching and the early years are just so important for our children. We’re investing in universities, why are we not investing in early childhood education? That’s the foundation for children.”

The government thinks 69,000 families will benefit from these fee reductions.

As for $10 a day daycare, the province says as of early November, there are 8,200 spaces in the province with more set to be announced this week.

“At this time, ministry staff are still in negotiations with child-care providers representing the remaining spaces, and those negotiations may not be complete by the end of December but are anticipated to be complete shortly after,” says the ministry in a statement to CityNews.

The next set of child-care changes in B.C. will come in September 2023 when the provincial government is promising families with children in preschool programs and before- and after-school care will see fees lowered to an average of $20 per day.

-With files from the Canadian Press and Hana Mae Nassar