Excerpts:
Child care is the second most expensive item in the living wage family budget after shelter.
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Child care costs rose by $48 per month, or 4.1 per cent since last year's calculation. Child care fees have seen a steep increase since the federal government cancelled the early learning and child care agreements with the provinces in 2006, more than cancelling out what families receive in the federal Universal Child Care Benefit (which has been frozen at $100/month). The BC government provides child care subsidies for low-income parents, but rates have not increased since 2005 for children aged between 2.5 and 5 years, and since 2007 for school-aged children in before- and after-school care.
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The most generous transfer program, the BC child care subsidy, for example, has been capped at a maximum of $550 per month since 2005, while group child care fees in Vancouver have increased by 44 per cent over this period, from $604/month in 2005 to $870/month in 2013 (according to the Westcoast Child Care Resource Centre's fee surveys). So while the subsidy covered almost the entire child care fee in 2005, it covers less than two-thirds of the costs of child care today, leaving a Vancouver single parent with a bill of $320/month out of pocket over and above the maximum subsidy amount, or $3,840 per year.