The owner and operator of Daydreams Early Learning Child Care in High River wants to clear up some misinformation regarding the federal budget.

It called for $30-billion over five years to eventually bring down daycare fees to ten dollars a day.

Julia Gwyn Morris says the budget provides plenty of good news.

"There's so many pieces in there that speak to what the federal government would like to see, this is a document that is for parents, for families for working people, for educators, for people who have been in the system and have looked for this for a very long time," she says.

Gwyn Morris says she was originally surprised with the amount of money being promised to child care, thinking there might be $3 billion dollars made available..

She says pronouncements by Premier Jason Kenney that child care would only be available nine to five and federally run are just wrong.

"When the Premier said it would be institutionalized, I'm wondering what his idea of institutionalized is, because I think that's just throwing words out and certainly scaring parents with the idea that 'what I need is not going to be available' I think he also mentioned something to the effect of rural centres would not be included. Really? I don't see anything in the document that says rural centres are not going to be included."

She says Kenney just doesn't want the federal government to have a hand in it and says instead of the premier and his minister rolling up their sleeves they're arbitrarily throwing it out and saying they don't like it.

"Both Minister Schultz and the Premier have been very firm about giving parents choice, everybody wants to give parents choice, choice is not being taken away," she says. "I have this discussion quite often with other centres where 'if we bring in this other system it's going to take away choice, it never will."

She says the people who are really hurt by unaffordable child care are the middle class because they don't qualify for subsidies, yet the cost of child care is too high.

Gwyn Morris says COVID has taught corporations and governments around the world that without support for families to go back to work there won't be an economy.

"Women make up a large portion of the workforce, and yes when I say women, I'm obviously talking about them, but single parenting families, like we've got dads out there that we deal with all the time that struggle to work and also hold their family together," she says.

She says there's still a lot of unknowns that will be determined through negotiations between the provinces and the federal government and the cost may settle somewhere higher than ten dollars a day, at 15, 20 or 25 dollars a day, but simply throwing out the plan is not the right thing to do.

 

Questions, comments or story ideas? e-mail news@highriveronline.com