FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Statement on Premier Eby’s Access to $10aDay Child Care

From the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC

VANCOUVER, B.C. — October 13, 2026 - The current attention to Premier Eby accessing $10aDay child care highlights our concerns – not because of his family’s earnings - but rather because the provincial government has stalled expansion of $10aDay child care for all families. 

The focus on the Premier’s family earnings is misplaced: all British Columbians have free access to Kindergarten, with high income earners contributing more for public services through the progressive tax system. That’s essentially the model that the NDP government promised, and started to build in 2018, and polling shows the majority of British Columbians still want.

When Premier Eby says that his goal is affordable child care - and not universal $10aDay child care - he is learning the wrong lesson from his own experience. Making an additional donation to a child care provider misses the point of universality - families don’t need to do that in elementary school or when receiving health care - and complicated income-testing schemes, as some suggest as a solution, create more administrative bureaucracy for child care operators and for the government.

Today, fewer than 30% of children in B.C. ages 0-12 years have access to licensed child care. Only 10% of the spaces we do have are $10aDay ($200 a month), leaving families in the other 90% of spaces paying up to $100/day ($2000 a month). 

For the thousands of families who have accessed $10aDay since 2018, the experience has been life changing. But, instead of working to ensure $10aDay is universal, as promised, so that all B.C. families who choose child care can benefit, the system has been underfunded and stalled. 

The current child care situation is so worrying that a week ago, for the first time ever, 50 child care organizations signed an open letter in the Globe & Mail urging BC’s next government to expand $10aDay child care and implement a funding model that reflects the true cost of quality care for children. 

Not long ago B.C. was a leader - with a vision and commitment to build a quality $10aDay child care system. But, parents in our province now pay the highest fees in Canada, and B.C. and Yukon are the only jurisdictions that have neither capped fees for families nor implemented a wage grid for educators. 

With solid economic evidence documenting the financial returns to government when more parents are able to participate in the workforce because of access to child care - we expect all political parties to acknowledge that child care is economic infrastructure and commit to building a universal quality child care system with capped fees for families and a fair wage grid for educators.

What’s newsworthy here is not that Premier Eby has access to $10aDay child care - but rather that not every family does.