motherhood issues
Filed Under Tips & Tricks | May 5, 2009
Voting is a very personal matter. Lots of factors affect our decision from the environment to the economy, with a good dose of leadership style thrown in. Given that Mother’s Day is fast approaching – as is the Provincial Election – we wanted to shed some light on a few motherhood issues that might affect your decision.
Education: Those of you with school age children may have received a letter from the Vancouver School Board regarding their $40 million shortfall. They are required to balance their budgets and so have passed a “compliance budget”, but they’ve also passed a “needs budget” which is the minimum needed to restore school services to a base level. One of the issues is per-pupil funding. As the number of enrolled students falls, there are a lot of fixed costs that remain the same. School Boards are looking for solutions other than school closures. Both the Green Party and the NDP are looking at flexibility in the per-pupil funding formula, while the Liberals point to past increases in the per-pupil grant. Other education hot topics include compliance with class size laws and Foundation Skills Assessment testing.
Childcare: The long-term solution advocated by both the Liberals and the NDP is to explore the feasibility of providing full day kindergarten for five-year-olds, with the Liberals also exploring kindergarten for four and three-year-olds. There is little evidence to suggest that an early kindergarten model is more beneficial than a good play-based pre-school, however pre-schools are private and fee-based and so are not available to all children. This concept should be watched closely – if the focus of this proposal becomes simply freeing up childcare spaces (in itself a worthy endeavour), or pushing forward more structured learning, we are missing an opportunity to make good play-based learning available to all pre-school children. The Green Party promises to create tax benefits for companies that provide on-site childcare, flex-hours, and job sharing
Voters of Tomorrow: Voter turnout continues to fall, especially amongst youth. Studies show that if a young person doesn’t vote in their first election they are increasingly less likely to ever vote. The most significant factor in whether they will vote in that first election is whether their parents discussed elections and politics with them. It’s never too early to start.
Arguably the most important ballot you cast on May 12th will not be for a candidate. In the provincial referendum we’ll be choosing between two electoral systems: our current FPTP and the Citizens’ Assembly recommended BC-STV. Learn more before you vote.
Here are the platforms in full of the three parties running candidates across the province:
Shoni Field was a member of the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform. She is a spokesperson for the grassroots BC-STV campaign and a graduate of the Women’s Campaign School. She’s committed to helping more women become involved in politics. For Shoni’s previous articles on politics, click here.
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[...] on brunches. Oh, and we’ve made a correction to the childcare section in this Tuesday’s article about next week’s election. The word count got in the way of the full message, so we’ve [...]