B.C.’S EXPERIMENT

How a $10-a-day daycare project is changing lives,

Daycare costs are a major chunk of the budget for practically any household with children, but a B.C. pilot project has been a gift for families who now pay just $10 a day.

“It came at the best moment for us, because we were at the point where we didn’t have any savings left,” said Gabriela Linck, a Vancouver mother of two studying marketing at Langara College. “I almost had to postpone my studies so I could afford everything.”

Affordable daycare was a major plank in the NDP platform during last year’s provincial election, although the grassroots, parent-led Coalition of ChildCare Advocates of BC launched its $10aDay campaign back in 2011.

In August, the Ministry of Children and Family Development announced it would choose more than 50 daycares with around 2,500 licensed spaces for the $60-million project, which began Nov. 1 and ends in March 2020.

More than half of Canadian provinces are using fee caps to put a brake on child-care costs. Quebec, Manitoba and P.E.I. have long had provincial fee caps and offer the most affordable child care in the country.

The median monthly cost for all age groups in Quebec is less than $200, while median monthly preschool fees in Manitoba and P.E.I. are $451 and $586, respectively, according to the latest report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

In an effort to gauge the success of B.C.’s pilot, StarMetro Vancouver talked to parents who are saving as much as $1,400 a month to find out what they are doing with the savings.