EXCERPTS
Dear Editor: Re: If you can’t afford child care, then stay home, Inbox, Burnaby NOW, June 14.
My family, like many of our generation, do not live beyond our limitations. We are not in the lower class and do not own an RV or expensive vehicle that we cannot afford. We are in what would be considered the financial upper class (which isn’t saying much these days). We are a young family growing up in a daycare crisis in which the spaces being provided are insufficient and/or substandard. The price of child care is not an issue with us, nor is it with the 130 people on the waiting lists in our neighbourhood and the 200-plus in the neighbourhood adjacent. The issue is with supply and demand for proper, safe, educational and properly staffed ECE daycare centres. We are about to lose our position in August for our three-year-old. The ladies that run our unbelievable daycare are doing everything in their power to find new locations within a reasonable radius of our area, to no avail.
They have the financing, as do we as parents if the rates must go up, if only they could find a location that fits all of the requirements to open a proper daycare centre. The City of Burnaby has many false statements in its child-care policy that state that they want to work with all parties involved to facilitate the necessary child care for their very family-oriented city, but time and time again come up short in any and all areas that its citizens need.
Now, as for you, Joe Sawchuk, and all of the other “if I don’t use it I shouldn’t pay” people.
I don’t ride city transit but pay for it in taxes. I don’t ride a bike to work but pay for the bike lanes. I don’t use 75 per cent of the services that my tax dollars go to … but I don’t mind. This is what makes our country the safe, clean, happy, world leader that it is. To keep all parties within a community, a city, a province, or a country happy, the tax dollars need to be dispersed in a fashion that allows it to remain stable in all ways. This “I don’t use it” is the thought process that would not take long to cause a country to collapse.
Now as far as the dispersion of tax dollars, if that is how some need to see it, try it this way.
My family gets $680 per month in tax credit for our two children; that’s $8,160 per year. One ECE worker who can care for eight children in the proper environment makes approximately $41,600/year (at the top end). Eight parents on a wage of $40,000/year and paying 22 per cent tax will contribute $70,400 back into the economy (plus 12 per cent at the till). Eight parents not working will now collect a higher tax benefit, but let’s keep it at $8,160/year, which equals $65,280 coming out of taxpayer pockets and being given to people that are contributing $0 back into the economy.
With a plan such as $10 a Day, the idea is to get more parents back into the workforce, allowing their tax dollars to accommodate the child-care costs. The plan is to cut down the child tax that parents receive (due to the fact they are working and will not need it as much) and use it to help facilitate the child-care system. The plan is to put every child in a safe and structured daycare, allowing for proper transition into the school system when the time comes. The plan is to try and make Canada a leader in this field, and B.C. wants to be the leader within this country
So next time you see someone get on a bus you have no intention of riding, or ride their bike down a lane you don’t use, or enter a seniors’ centre that you don’t think you will ever need, just smile and think, “My taxpayer dollars are helping to make their life and the lives of all Canadians better.”
Steve Miller, Burnaby
-reprinted from Burnaby Now