Clark’s Liberals pledge $1 billion for child care
Liberals’ ‘hollow’ change of heart earns cautious praise from advocates
Critics are offering muted praise for Premier Christy Clark’s offer to spend $1 billion to make child care virtually free for middle-income families when her government returns to the legislature Thursday for its throne speech.
The money would come from amendments to February’s Liberal budget, Clark said, and would create 60,000 new spaces over four years in addition to 13,000 new spaces promised earlier by her government.
The government now offers full child-care subsidies to families with household incomes under $40,000. The new plan would make the full subsidy available to families that earn up to $60,000 a year.
“It’s going to be low or no cost” for child-care spaces for those families, Clark said.
There would also be a partial subsidy for families with incomes up to $100,000, potentially making 150,000 families eligible for financial support, she said.
The savings would vary depending on the region of the province and cost of the child care, government officials say, but it could mean free spaces for some families and savings of around 50 per cent for others.
“There will be those who say we are only doing it because we want to get votes,” Clark told a told a B.C. Liberal party women’s lunch event on Wednesday. “What I would say to them is voters have spoken, they have told us what they wanted us to do.”
Sharon Gregson, a spokeswoman for the $10 a Day Child Care campaign, called the timing of Clark’s announcement “almost disrespectful to families.”
Gregson’s campaign has called for child care that would cost $10 a day since 2011. Their plan calls for an expansion in publicly funded child care via community-delivered spaces that would get the majority of their funding through the Ministry of Education and school boards rather than fees paid by parents.
The plan would reduce fees for infant and toddler care to $10 a day, add 22,000 spaces in the next three years and invest in the training and education of early childhood educators.
“I think the Liberal government has had so many chances to do the right thing. To see this done now is just so hollow, it’s hard to be celebratory,” she said.
Nonetheless, she said her campaign was ready to move forward.
“Our goal has been to make sure child care is an election issue,” she said. “The $10-a-day plan, and those that promote it, are non-partisan.”
“Whoever forms government, we will work with to fix child care.”
The head of the YWCA in Metro Vancouver said no matter the timing of Clark’s announcement, “the goal is to get it done.”
“We welcome investment in child care,” Janet Austin said. “The more people we have at the table, the better. What’s important to us is the direction we’re going in.”
The YWCA has been running a social media campaign to trumpet the economic benefits of improved child care. They claim investment in universal child care would lead to 69,000 new jobs and a $5.8-billion boost to the economy.
“It’s a foundational social and economic investment. It’s not a drain,” Austin said. “It will build our economy significantly.”
Before the election, Clark’s Liberals rejected calls for a $1.5-billion universal child care plan, saying it was unaffordable and would require a tax hike.
The Liberals had projected a $295-million surplus this fiscal year in the February budget, but Clark said internal figures show “we’ve had a much bigger than expected surplus this year” and there is money available to fund the childcare plan. There’s also, theoretically, an additional $2.5 billion in forecast allowances, surpluses and contingencies over the budget’s threeyear plan.
“It’s the biggest investment anybody has ever made in one shot in child care in the province,” she said.
Clark also took a shot at the NDP’s $10-a-day child-care plan, which would take 10 years to implement, saying “that’s too long.”
NDP Leader John Horgan mocked Clark for mimicking his platform in a bid to stay in power.
“Apparently there’s going to be an NDP throne speech tomorrow,” Horgan told a party caucus meeting in Victoria. “It is really hard to believe that after 16 years of ignoring child care, ignoring people with disabilities, ignoring income assistance rates, that all of a sudden after people have rejected you at the polls that our platform looks pretty appealing.”
Horgan said the Liberals appear to be “making stuff up.”
After watching the premier’s incredible political transformation this week, there’s really only one question that remains unanswered:
Who the hell are you and what have you done with the real Christy Clark?
Surely this can’t be the genuine Clark who, just a few weeks ago, ridiculed the NDP’s idea of $10-a-day child care and a host of other “unaffordable” social programs.
Yet there was “Clark” (or whoever this devious impostor is) on Wednesday rolling out a $1-billion child-care program that will be “low or no cost” for many parents.
Throw in her sudden support for increasing welfare rates (after freezing them for a decade) and indexing disability rates to inflation (after cruelly clawing back disabled people’s bus passes) and it’s obvious the real Clark has been replaced by a body double or an incredibly sophisticated android.
Either that, or we are witnessing a political version of the Freaky Friday movie and she has somehow executed a mind swap with NDP Leader John Horgan.
Though plausible, these explanations seem unlikely.
To my knowledge, Clark does not have an identical twin that has taken her place, and humanoid robot technology is still in its infancy.
That leaves the Horgan mind swap, but the NDP leader made his own appearance later in the day and seemed still in possession of his own consciousness.
Like everyone else, he is amazed at the Clark transmutation.
“Apparently, there’s going to be an NDP throne speech tomorrow,” he observed, referring to Thursday’s opening of the B.C. legislature.
It’s now clear that throne speech — laying out Clark’s governing agenda and her new vision for the province — will bear little resemblance to the election campaign she just waged.
Though Clark’s Liberals got the most votes and won the most seats in that election, the NDP and the Green party have agreed to gang up and defeat her throne speech, which would force Clark to resign.
And there you have the real reason for her metamorphosis. The old Christy Clark just wasn’t cutting it with voters any more.
This 2.0 software update of Clark is fresh-out-of-the-box, shiny, new and different. And she’s clearly hoping enough voters will like this version in another election.
But won’t Horgan become premier if Clark quits? That’s the most likely outcome, though Lieutenant-Governor Judith Guichon could order another election instead.
“British Columbians don’t want an election,” Clark 2.0 said Wednesday.
But I think Christy Clark desperately wants another election, she wants it right now and she’s hoping Guichon calls it.
That would be Clark’s best hope for rescuing herself from her current predicament.
If it doesn’t happen, this new version of Clark could start wearing thin too, including on many Liberals who might think a different party leader would be a better option than a new version of the old one.