FLETCHER: David Eby’s $10-a-day daycare subsidy trips him up before debate

Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.VICTORIA — A $13 billion deficit rolls off him like rain off an Arc’teryx jacket, but David Eby’s daycare discount has stuck to him like seagull guano.Mere months after the NDP’s finance minister admitted that British Columbia’s books are so bad that there is a three-year freeze on growing the number of subsidized daycare spaces, Eby disclosed at a campaign stop that he and his doctor wife have the coveted $10-a-day program for their kids.With a household income of around $500,000 and a home in Vancouver’s exclusive Point Grey neighbourhood, Eby would not seem to be a priority target for an expensive child care subsidy program that has been extended to about 10% of the parents who could use it.Indeed, as with the Quebec daycare program that served as a model, the big knock on this type of system is that low-income people working shifts and long hours can’t use it, even if they could get to it. Well-off parents with transport and time flexibility tend to end up at the front of the line.The story broke on Thanksgiving Sunday, and by Tuesday, Eby was becoming testy with the reporters demanding details on his claim that he paid the difference between his local YMCA daycare rate and the subsidy rate he suddenly found himself eligible for. A Global TV reporter’s microphone was shut off at a Vancouver campaign stop, and then Eby complained that he was being shouted at, without adding any numbers or details to his daycare repayment story..The controversy comes at a bad time for Eby, as the only TV debate of this snap election campaign has been hastily arranged for Wednesday evening. It’s a bad time for many others too.Advance voting has opened for the many municipal elections that are competing for attention, with chaotic clusters of election signs gathering at major street corners. Many have come into the civic election after a series of steep property tax increases.This provincial election should be about the huge implications of the NDP’s multi-pronged effort to settle indigenous land claims, as well as the record debt and deficit that have gone out of control specifically since Eby took over from John Horgan’s NDP and inherited a surplus.But for now, daycare it is. Hospital closures, a permissive — even subsidized — drug culture fuelling crime and street disorder, soaring taxes, and declining businesses may also have to wait for attention.Even if Eby did repay the true cost of his personal daycare, it’s not like that creates an extra space for someone who needs it. Young people leaving BC have helped bring down astronomical rents, but child care remains in short supply as the NDP government approaches the tenth anniversary of launching this program..Horgan’s NDP government started the $10-a-day myth, responding to an orchestrated campaign by the BC Federation of Labour. As the true costs and complexity of a province-wide government program became clearer, Horgan admitted that $10-a-day was just a slogan borrowed from the BC Fed, and actual rates would have to be set where they needed to be to get it off the ground. The union movement’s role in this and other policies of the NDP also deserves a closer look. Informal child care is replaced with licensed, and eventually unionized, child care that serves as an extension of the public school system. School trustee elections are underway too, but a scan of the local candidates finds almost all of them are either retired teachers or spouses of teachers with a well-known agenda.In BC, we have seen a similar NDP program to regionalize and centralize the province’s assistance for parents of autistic children. Customized programs arranged by parents and caregivers, with subsidies to cover the costs, have been moved to conform to a more regional, state-licensed model that grows and grows.Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.tomfletcherbc@gmail.comX: @tomfletcherbc

FLETCHER: David Eby’s $10-a-day daycare subsidy trips him up before debate

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