BURSTB.C. NDP Leader David Eby says that when his children’s YMCA childcare centre became one of the 10 per cent in the province to offer its services for $10 per day, he and his family decided it was best to donate the difference to the centre.
“We made that decision because we didn’t feel that we needed that benefit,” he told reporters in Vancouver on Tuesday. “We wanted other families to benefit.”
But he dodged questions about the donation amount, or whether he received a tax write-off. Asked repeatedly for exact figures, Eby would only say that he “donated the difference.”
Meanwhile, the NDP tried to turn the tables and sow doubt about Conservative plans for subsidized child care in the province, suggesting that if elected, a Tory government would swap subsidies out for tax credits.
The NDP issued a news release highlighting comments by the B.C. Conservative Party’s most recent child care critic, Chilliwack North candidate Heather Maahs, who called the $10-per-day system a “boondoggle,” and argued in the legislature for a system that does not “steer” children toward a “government-preferred model of care.”
Margareta Dovegal, Conservative candidate for Vancouver-Yaletown, spoke for the Tories in response to Eby’s family childcare situation. She also expanded on her party’s plans.
She called it “fundamentally unfair” that Eby’s family took a spot in this program, even if he donated the money back.
“He has a responsibility to recuse himself from programs like this that are really, really strained,” she said in an interview.
Dovgal says her party is committed to maintaining the $10-per-day spots already available — “for the families that need it.” But she says the party is open to means testing.
“Means testing is important,” she said. “We see the example of David Eby’s family and the lottery-based system. And I think for future spots, as they become available, it is crucial for families that need it that they are at the top of a priority list.”
Sharon Gregson, spokesperson for The Coalition of Child Care Advocates of B.C., says the real question is why the NDP government has failed to fulfil former premier John Horgan’s promise to provide $10-per-day child care for all B.C. children.
“The donation is completely beside the point,” she said. “The point is that David Eby’s family should have access to $10-a-day childcare — and so should everybody else.”
Horgan promised to implement $10-per-day child care in 2017 when the NDP was campaigning to gain power. He backed up this pledge in 2021 with an agreement for federal support to help pay for the program’s expansion.
But the province has since fallen far short of this goal, and Eby paused the program’s expansion in the 2026 budget.
“We haven’t been able to even get close,” Gregson said.
Gregson’s group estimates there are about 180,000 child care spaces in the province, enough for about 30 per cent of all B.C.’s children. Roughly 10 per cent of these are in selected child care centres enrolled in the $10-per-day program, in which the government funds the majority of the cost of child care at those centres.
The rest of the province’s child care centres provide reduced fees through the Child Care Fee Reduction Initiative, which pays a set amount of the total cost. Under this system, some facilities cost more than others, depending on geography or whether they are for-profit, and could be as much as $2,000 per month, according to Gregson.
Parents with a family income of fewer than $111,000 can also apply for means-tested subsidies to further reduce fees.
Despite Gregson’s dissatisfaction with progress under the NDP, she panned Maahs’s tax credit proposal.
But she notes that the Conservative Party still hasn’t released details of an actual plan.
“We haven’t heard very much at all other than Lorne Doerksen saying that they wouldn’t throw out the existing system,” she said.
Dovgal says the party will release its full childcare plans soon. The primary goal will be to provide parents with more choice and expand the total number of spaces in the province, she said. This would involve allowing people to choose some independent childcare operators previously excluded from certain subsidy programs.
“Ensuring that there’s availability and access to a variety of childcare options is really important,” she said. “And choice is really the crux of our difference from the NDP on this.”