84 VANMAG.COM MAY 2017
few weeks. It’s an arrangement that’s worked, but she
wonders if their lives would be better somewhere else.
“We talk about moving to the Interior, to Kelowna
or a smaller town to grow vegetables, raise sheep and
have a ceramics studio,” she says. “We talk about living
somewhere warm or where the cost of living doesn’t
burn you out.”
A City Without Support
You can hear the frustration in Mary Clare Zak’s voice.
As the city’s director of social policy, she’s been working
hard to find ways to help new parents, and it’s an
uphill battle. The City of Vancouver set a target of
creating 1,000 new child care spaces between 2015 and
- They’re about 70 percent of the way there, but even
that’s not enough.
“When it’s a shortage of roughly 12,000 spaces,
what is 1,000?” says Zak. “My own staff—some of them
have three different arrangements. They’ve got two
days a week at the daycare, one day a week they have an
arrangement with another family, one day a week they
have a relative who can take care of the child. That’s
stressful. That’s very hard on families.”
The need is exponentially greater than what the city
can provide, says Zak, especially with very little support.
“As a city—and I know this surprises some people,
but I have to say it every time I talk to anybody—social
services are not our mandate,” says Zak. “That belongs
to the province and the federal government. But the vast
majority of the capital, I would say 90 percent, has come
from the City of Vancouver.”
One successful local initiative has been getting
daycares into schools. Empty classrooms are prime real
estate for child care, and with attendance down at a lot
of schools, it’s a brilliant use of space. It can also be cost-
effective when the required renovations coincide with
scheduled seismic upgrades. It makes these schools
more desirable, too: enrolment sees a boost when
daycares are added.
So far, hundreds of new daycare spots have opened
at 13 different schools, and the benefits go beyond child
care. Daycares foster a sense of community and support
the city’s ecological goals—parents will travel less when
dropping their kids off at a single location.
Considering all the pluses, you’d think it would be easy
to get the province on board. But when the city decided to
build two new in-school daycares, the province chipped
in less than 10 percent of the funds. Over 90 percent of
the infrastructure costs ended up being covered by the
city, with non-profit societies providing operating funds.
A spokesperson for the BC Ministry of Children
and Family Development explained the disparity: on
large infrastructure projects like these, the province’s
contribution is capped at $500,000, regardless of the
scope. “The City of Vancouver is working on several large
ADULTS ONLY
multi-million-dollar projects that require major capital
investments. The large scope of those projects and the
resulting high costs are a decision that the city has made
and has no bearing on the maximum
provincial investment allowed under our capital
program,” he said.
Since 2014, the province has also invested $3.1 million
toward new licensed child care spaces in Vancouver—but
kept away from the city’s own initiatives. Over the last
three years, the province has been directly responsible
for the creation of just 343 new spaces in the city.
John Horgan, leader of the BC NDP, is unimpressed
with this approach. He argues that child care in B.C.
needs a massive overhaul, with a $10-a-day child care plan
a key point in his party’s provincial election platform.
“The Liberals, ironically, don’t get what this is all
about. They believe that scraps here and scraps there to
give the impression of an overall plan is a better way to go
rather than having a concerted, focused effort in making
sure that we’re providing spaces,” he says.
But the criticism goes beyond the province. Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau announced $7 billion over 10
years for child care in March’s federal budget; however,
it’s unclear how that money will be distributed among
the provinces, and we won’t see the first of it until 2018.
City staff move ahead now because they understand
how important improving child care is to Vancouver’s
future—even if they’re aiming for a goal they know they
can’t reach alone.
Vancouver’s constant evolution has led to some
unexpected opportunities, however. With fewer people
driving into downtown each year, the Water Street
parkade in Gastown has become increasingly empty. The
roof has been slated for conversion to two new daycares.
It’s a start, but Zak stresses that the city needs more help
to make a real dent in the demand for child care.
“It’s not enough,” she says. “Until other orders of
government step up, we’re not going to see the kind of
impact we really need.”The Cost of Staying
For those who stay in Vancouver, survival takes
ingenuity—and luck. I’ve watched parents in the city
attend business conferences with babies on their back,
split nannies between multiple families, or work from
home with a newborn.
While we hounded 50 daycares relentlessly in search
of a spot, Espiritu and her husband eventually scored
full-time care after only moderately harassing a long list
of daycares on a daily basis.
Even so, Espiritu wonders if it’s all worth it.
“When you can no longer find the energy or time
to enjoy the things that made you come here in
the first place,” she says, “it makes it easier to
contemplate leaving.”