The campaign trail heated up Thursday with BC NDP Leader John Horgan going on the offensive, blaming his previous partners in governance for British Columbia’s current lack of $10 a day childcare.
“We wanted to advance $10-a-day childcare as quickly as possible. The BC Greens did not support that,” said Horgan from Maple Ridge today.
The $10-a-day daycare was part of the NDP’s election platform back in 2017, but Horgan says the minority government couldn’t roll it out because it didn’t have support from their Green partners.
But BC Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau says that is not true.
“You know what’s interesting is that John Horgan and I both studied history. But I’m not interested in rewriting it,” Furstenau fired back after hearing Horgan’s remarks.
“We made it clear this summer that we were committed to it. I made it clear in a letter that we are committed to it.”
The NDP committed to open 24,000 new childcare spaces by 2021 after their election. According to their numbers, they’re close, but not there yet, something Horgan defended.
“We did what was possible in a minority situation keeping our partners content as we could, that’s why I’m asking for B.C.’s support today, so we can have a stable government that is exclusively focused on their needs, not on backroom deals,” said Horgan.
But instead of so-called ‘backroom deals’, Furstenausays both parties were working behind the scenes towards childcare legislation. She called Horgans’s statements misleading, in order to justify what the BC Greens call “an unnecessary election” during a pandemic.
“This election is entirely the responsibility and the decision of John Horgan,” said Furstenau.
“He certainly needs to stop trying to blame me.”
As the provincial party leaders duke it out, hope for families came federally with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau renewing his government’s commitment to create a Canada-wide child care system in his throne speech Wednesday.
BC Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson responding to the news with optimism.
“We can do better on daycare, we can work with the federal government, we can designate facilities for it, and we can fund them, and we’ll be talking a bit about that in the next week or two,” said Wilkinson.
The federal plan still has to pass a confidence vote in the coming weeks.
Kori Sidaway
