Richmond – At last night’s community debate Richmond residents watched as NDP candidates continued their dishonest presentation of the facts and creative accounting of the 1990s.
Many of the questions were concerned with services for children, early childhood development, and child poverty. When asked about her party’s plan to reduce child poverty NDP candidate Sue Wallis openly admitted, “I’m not sure what my party’s plan is.”
Linda Reid, Minister of State for Child Care, and BC Liberal candidate for Richmond East, pointed out to the audience that the Province has worked tirelessly to address the root causes of child poverty by expanding early childhood intervention and early learning programs, investing record amounts of funding in child care and programs for children with special needs, increasing child care subsidies to families, introducing a rental assistance program and creating jobs for working families.
“Over the past eight years our government has made record investments for BC children and families,” said Linda Reid. “We now have twelve times the budget for autism treatment, the first ever child and youth mental health plan, and we were the first Canadian jurisdiction to implement the Roots of Empathy program for school-aged children.”
Minister Reid noted that, by comparison, when Carole James was the Director of Child Care for the Province in 1999 nothing was done to help parents with child care. James proposed a billion-dollar “free” child care program in 2001, without any plan to actually fund it, and never created a single child care space. Under the BC Liberals child care has the largest budget ever with over $300 million invested this year and $35 million dollars worth of capital investment building child care centres across BC.
NDP Misleading Richmond Residents:
Shawkat Hasan, Richmond East
NDP Claim: “The NDP government left BC with a $1.5B surplus in 2001.”
THE FACTS: The NDP’s record in the 1990s speaks for itself. The Province witnessed the NDP double the operating debt from $7 billion to over $14 billion, the introduction of a “fudge-it” budget in 1996, and BC’s borrowing costs drastically increase placing a heavy burden on future generations.
NDP Claim: “BC is the poorest province in Canada.”
THE FACTS: BC has been a national leader in many economic categories, including record levels of employment, economic growth that exceeded the national rate, and seven consecutive credit rating upgrades.
NDP Claim: “There are 181,000 children living in poverty in BC.”
THE FACTS: Child poverty in BC decreased by 15% between 2003 and 2006 to 16.1%. The low income cut-off was significantly higher under the NDP when it peaked at 18.1% in 1996.
