Re: “Meet daycare ‘lottery’ winners,” Feb. 17.
I am disturbed by the undemocratic method the NDP government has used to implement its pilot project of subsidized daycare.
While I’m fully supportive of subsidized daycare for all reasons stated in the article, it would be impossible to devise a more unfair system of selecting who gets this benefit.
While parents at one of the 53 centres selected receive financial assistance in amounts as high as $1,500 a month, other parents in B.C. with the same financial status and qualifications receive $0.
If the recent cost-reduction in MSP premiums had been done through a lottery system, some B.C. residents would be paying no MSP premiums while others would be paying the full pre-reduction amount. The resulting public outcry would be deafening.
The response that this is a trial project lasting only until March of 2020 does not justify this unfairness for over a year.
As with MSP, if a full reduction to $10 a day for daycare was not available for all meeting the criteria, a smaller assistance for all would be a more fair system.
Calls expressing this concern to the offices of Doug Routley, MLA for Nanaimo-North Cowichan, and Carole James, minister of finance, have gone unanswered.
Al Tanner
Gabriola Island
