A new child care partnership between the federal and provincial governments came into effect on Dec. 1 and will see fees reduced by half for B.C. parents.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and B.C. Premier David Eby were at Richmond Jewish Day School to “celebrate” the launch on Friday morning.
The private school on No. 5 Road – on Richmond’s Highway to Heaven – is one of the beneficiaries of this program at its in-house child-care centre.
Trudeau pointed out having affordable child care means parents with young children can stay in the workforce.
“Social policies like affordable child care are also economic policies,” he said.
He noted B.C. was the first to sign on to the $10 a day child care program, in July 2021, and now all provinces have signed similar agreements with the federal government.
Eby noted when the province launched its child care program in 2018, there were too few spaces and fees were too high.
“Child care is one of the most expensive bills facing many families,” he said.
“(The federal funding is) not just good news for families with young kids, it’s good news for everybody because it helps us respond to the labour shortages we see in our economy and it helps people get to work to build our economy,” Eby added.
Accessible, affordable child care was prioritized as a “core service” of the provincial government, Eby elaborated.
The fee reduction is the result of a five-year federal funding agreement with B.C. worth $3.2 billion.
The federal funding will affect fees for about 69,000 families in B.C. with the cost of child care at centres that are not already part of the provincial $10-a-day program.
More Richmond child-care centres were announced on Friday as coming online with the provincial program.
These are Baby Steps Infant & Toddler Care (10 spaces), Terra Nova Children’s Centre (25 spaces), Cranberry Children’s Society (34 spaces), Gardens Children’s Centre (37 spaces), Bowling Green Road Children’s Centre (49 spaces) and Riverside Child Development Centre (24 spaces).
