Chris Selley: David Eby’s day-care scandal reveals ugly truths

One of the most psychologically interesting pathologies political leaders can develop, often with professionally tragic results, is akin to hanging on to a rising balloon. There’s something about yourself that you (or your senior staff) know or should know could be politically explosive down the road. Best, clearly, to get out in front of it, or at least have some well-planned contingency to deal with it if it comes to light.

But gosh, isn’t the view beautiful up here? We have a majority government. Maybe no one will ever notice “the thing.” We could just go to Earls instead of worrying about it.

With less than two weeks before election day and with the end looking like it could be nigh for the British Columbia NDP government, leader David Eby’s day-care balloon has deflated with a flatulent flourish. The Conservatives have quite rightly pounced on the revelation that Eby’s kids occupy highly coveted $10-per-day day-care spots — a legacy of the Justin Trudeau government in Ottawa, though of course every province participating (Quebec is not) is tailoring it to fit their perceived needs.

Those cheapest spots are very hard to come by everywhere in Canada that they exist. Roughly 90 per cent of child-care spaces in B.C. are not available at $10 per day or anything like it. And ample research shows it is not the people who need that cheap day care the most who tend to find those spots.

“The result is a system that is more affordable in theory, but less accessible in practice, especially for families who were not already using formal childcare,” Parisa Mahboubi and Tingting Zhang wrote in a C.D. Howe Institute op-ed earlier this year. “Lower-income households remain less likely to secure a spot, limiting their ability to benefit from the program. In Ontario, childcare enrollment among low-income families has even dropped by 31 per cent since 2019.”

Eby is not low income. He has been earning over $200,000 as premier and his wife is a practising doctor.

So, his dwindling crowd of defenders points to two main things.

One, the program from which Eby and his family benefit is not conceived of as means-tested; it’s conceived of as “universal,” like public K-12 education or health care. His and his spouse’s income thus isn’t relevant.

Except … again it’s not universal! Not even close! And hang on, who was it who capped enrolment in the program in B.C. back in February, partly due to stated concerns over (cough, cough) “equity,” because it wasn’t serving the families who most needed it? Oh right, it was David Eby! Zoiks!

The second Eby defence: He gave a donation to his own kids’ day-care centre, supposedly to offset his family’s good fortune. His elder child was enrolled there before the centre applied for participation in the $10-a-day program, you see, and he and his spouse understandably didn’t want to move him or use another facility for their younger child. (That was C.D. Howe’s point about $10 day care going too often to parents who were paying far more beforehand, rather than those who couldn’t afford any formal child care at all — not that child care has to be formal to be valuable.)

The donation as some kind of recompense doesn’t make sense at all. First of all, it harpoons the “universality” myth. Eby clearly feels he’s apologizing for something — but he’s giving that donation to his own kids’ subsidized day-care centre! In one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in B.C.!

I suspect all this is down in some part to Justin Trudeau not being around anymore. His dewy-eyed “better is always possible” messaging, which gave us not-universal day care and not-universal dental care, seems almost prehistoric today. It’s much more difficult nowadays to argue we are limited only by our ambition, as opposed to by financial resources, so it’s natural that more people are going to see the wisdom of means-tested solutions over “universal” fantasies. That’s good news for conservatives in general and B.C. Conservative Leader Lorne Doerkson specifically.

The seat-projection model from poll aggregator 338Canada, based on the most recent polls, gives the NDP just a 19 per cent chance of winning the most seats and the Conservatives an 81 per cent chance of doing it instead. The last B.C. election wasn’t even two years ago. Eby had a majority. There was no good reason to go this early, and as it turns out, probably good reason not to. 338Canada’s rolling poll average shows the Conservatives and NDP were essentially neck and neck until Eby called the election in late September, and then quite suddenly they weren’t neck and neck at all, very much to the Conservatives’ benefit.

This election could go down as one of the greatest political self-immolations in Canadian political history. At least afterward Eby will have cheap day care for as long as he and his spouse need it. But he could have afforded not to take it. And for those low-income parents who can’t get access? Instead of asking them to wait for “universal” coverage managed from the national and provincial capitals, maybe the government could help much more efficiently by just giving them money for child care.

National Post
cselley@postmedia.com